Symphony of Torment
by Threni
Summary: This was inspired by Dmitri Shostakovich's 14th Symphony, and is by far my darkest Fanfiction to date. Stoick returns to Berk to learn his son is missing. But Hiccup did not run away. No, something far worse happened... I Own Nothing. All Rights Reserved. Rated 'T' for a reason!
1. Chapter 1

**Symphony of Torment**

 **This story was inspired by Shostakovich's 14th Symphony, which is a Symphony that focuses on death, namely unnatural death. It was written while Shostakovich, who was no stranger to death, was recovering in the hospital and feared he might not survive to hear it. This Symphony contains some of the creepiest music I have ever heard.**

 **This is a horror story and a mystery story, and it is called "Symphony of Torment" for a reason, and that reason is not an ironic one. There are themes of suicide, neglect, depression, violence, character death, and revenge in this story, and there are also implications of past tortures, rape, bullying, and murder.**

 **Fair warning! I was not kidding when I called this my darkest work!**

 **Chapter 1**

The ships that pulled into Berks harbor were battered and barely seaworthy, and considerably fewer in number than when they had departed. Yet another search for the dragon nest had come to grief. Those who had gone on the expedition and managed to return, and not necessarily in one piece, returned downcast and dejected; their every movement evoking the depression of failure and despair. The nest remained as hidden as ever, raids would not improve, the food shortages would only get worse now that winter was rapidly approaching, and a lot of friends were gone, and all for nothing. Nobody felt this more than Chief Stoick, the man who had ordered them to go on this quest. And now, in addition to all of this, he was informed that his only son was missing.

"He's been disappearing into the woods after dragon training and he doesn't often return until after nightfall, but he's never been gone this long!" Gobber the Blacksmith told him anxiously.

"Haven't you sent out any searches?" he demanded, concerned for Hiccups safety but also irritated that it always his son who was getting in trouble.

"Of course we have, but we don't have much manpower when you take everyone out to find that nest! And there's a whole lotta ground to cover."

Stoick sighed. "All right, I'll get rid of my pack and we'll start looking. What's he been doing in the woods anyway?"

"No one knows. I suspect he's either been avoiding his fans or doing some kinda special dragon training. Maybe the Hofferson lassie's teaching him on the sly."

Stoick eyed him perplexedly. "What are you talking about? What fans?"

As they walked into the village, Gobber told him about Hiccup's astonishing achievements in Dragon Training. He described how Hiccup, unarmed, had brought down a Deadly Nadder and had scared away a Hideous Zippleback without even touching it. Stoick could hardly believe his ears. Was his boy, the runt of the village, the worst Viking in history, the wimpy fishbone who could not step outside without disaster striking, finally becoming the man Stoick had always wanted him to be? He hardly dared hope, having been disappointed too many times in the past. Nevertheless, this news, which several elderly Vikings confirmed for him, made him much more eager to find his absent son.

He quickly organized search parties. Most of his villagers were downright annoyed that right after an exhausting and distressing voyage they had to go find Hiccup the Fishbone. Some muttered they would rather leave him in the woods. On the other hand, the five teens who had been with Hiccup during Dragon Training; the kids closest to his own age, were just as eager as their Chief to find Hiccup, but for reasons of their own.

"We've gotta find him!" Tuffnut Thorsten declared as they went into the woods, "Berk won't be the same without him,"

"Yeah, we'll have to find someone else to beat up," his twin sister agreed, but she looked more worried than her tone implied.

"And he's gotta show me how he's gotten so good in Dragon Training," Snotlout Jorgenson declared. His father was Stoick's half brother, which made Snotlout Hiccup's most serious rival for the Chiefdom, a fact Snotlout deeply detested Hiccup for. He had been Hiccup's worst tormentor for years, as if he could make Hiccup give up his position to him by, as he called it, 'putting him in his place'.

Astrid Hofferson privately agreed with Snotlout. She too wanted to know how Hiccup had gotten so good at fighting Dragons. They passed a section of the woods where every tree bore dozens of cuts inflicted by her axe. She had always excelled at throwing axes, and once Hiccup started surpassing her in the rankings she had unleashed her anger, frustration, and jealousy in this way. She hoped very much to be the one to find Hiccup, because she fully intended to discover the secret to Hiccup's success and she had no qualms about doing it forcefully. After all, she was the one meant to place first and kill the Monstrous Nightmare, not Hiccup.

As for Fishlegs Ingerman, he kept silent about finding Hiccup. His reasons for finding Hiccup were both selfish and humane. He wanted to find Hiccup because it was not right that a teenager should be lost in the woods, but he was also worried about his own fate. If something serious had happened to Hiccup, it was likely the others would turn on him once they needed someone to prank. And Viking pranks were not playful, at least in the eyes of the victim. Snotlout would say it was all in good fun, but Hiccup would have called it outright cruelty, and Fishlegs agreed.

So they hunted and found nothing except the remains of a great tree that had somehow fallen over, roots and all. The tree had been perfectly healthy and there were clear signs that it had crashed because something had collided with it. This put them all on the alert because they concluded only a large dragon could have hit it.

As Stoick sought after his missing son he barraged Gobber with question after question about what Hiccup had done during his absence. He wanted to hear every detail about how his son was succeeding in Dragon Training, and Gobber was often stumped for answers.

It was a lovely day in the woods. The last days of summer were upon them. The leaves and needles in the trees were lovely and vibrant shades of green. Sunbeams poked through branches and lit up selective places radiantly. The whole woods had a magical feeling to it, a drowsy and hypnotic feeling, as though one's purpose was really to flop into a patch of grass and dream their life away beneath the warm rays of golden light. Here and there a bird chirped and fluttered away as the searchers approached, and now and then a squirrel leapt up a tree and a hare darted into bush. These were the only signs of life anyone saw. There were no footprints visible—it had rained and hailed the previous afternoon—and though several Vikings had brought dogs they were unable to pick up the boy's scent. It was as though Hiccup had just been plucked up by the Gods and carried somewhere else.

And then the Ingerman elder found the rotting remains of a wooden shield wedged between two great boulders. He called to the others and after a while, with difficulty, they found a way over the boulders and into a large cove. Here more than anywhere else the atmosphere was tranquil and peaceful, as if the Gods had declared this spot would forever be preserved from the troubles of the world. Small gnat swarms skittered about in the patches of sunlight that fell on a pond, whose clear waters gently lapped against the dirt in the cove's center.

When the question was asked, none of Vikings present recalled ever seeing this place before. It was too out of the way for most, and it was proved to be largely inaccessible for the stout men. A child could get in easily enough, but not a full grown Viking with a body wider than a boar's. Since Hiccup had a child's physique, Stoick's instincts told him that his son had come here. The area was examined and a knife was found in the pond.

"That's his, all right," Gobber announced upon examination, "it's got the three 'H' rune pattern on the hilt. It's kinda his personal seal, ya know?"

Stoick did not know but pretended he did. And then he received a jolt. Near the knife, scattered all about the ground, were dragon scales.

There is little need to describe in detail the remaining events of that awful day, for they can easily be imagined. No other trace of Hiccup was found beyond the knife, and with the dragon scales present there was no conclusion to be made other than he had been carried off by one. It was not exactly something unprecedented. Indeed, Stoick's own wife had been taken during a raid many years before. Nevertheless, he stayed up all night, hoping perhaps Hiccup would turn up, and he kept the searches going for many days more. They found nothing.

For Stoick, the hours passed horribly and heavily as he waited and hunted in vain for some news that might relieve his sorrow and rekindle his hope. Gobber had an even harder time than he. To walk into his forge and not see Hiccup rigging some contraption, to not hear him make a sarcastic comment in that nasally voice of his, and to not see his head bob up from behind a pile of dull swords, and to feel he would never see such things again, was heart wrenching for the cripple.

The rest of Berk mourned less. Someone had once said 'no one will miss the little nuisance,' and they were largely right. Most of them felt sorrier for Stoick himself than for Hiccup. Snotlout was thrilled, for it meant he was surely now to be the next Chief. Astrid was now the undisputed champion of Dragon Training, and while she regretted Hiccup's untimely death she wasted no time grieving for him. But then, there were very few people on Berk whom she would have grieved for.

Hiccup's funeral took place on an overcast and windy afternoon. It was a short and dismal event. With no body there was no need for a grave, so Hiccup's name was just craved into a stone specifically used for such occasions. A few short prayers and spells were uttered by the village priests and elders, but although the entire village turned out, as ordered, there were few genuine mourners. More were worried if a storm might be coming, for the sky grew increasingly dark and the wind became colder and stronger. They joined in the prayers that were said, as was customary and proper, but it was merely lip service.

And then it was all over. The villagers returned to their homes and prepared for the storm that was coming. In private they joked that Berk would be safer now that Hiccup was gone and wondered if they could throw a party without Stoick realizing its true meaning.

This might sound heartless, but death was common for the Berkians. Dragon raids, diseases, childbearing, shipwrecks, starvation, fires, and the inhospitable cold took many lives. Children learned from a very young age that Death was something to live with, and they were raised to be hardened to it. They were raised to be warriors. Warriors saluted the deceased and then moved on, not dwelling on the past. And since Hiccup had been hugely unpopular, to the point where villagers would rather risk death seeking a dragon nest than spend time around him, nobody felt like mourning him for long.

So as the storm clouds moved in, Hiccup was swiftly forgotten. His name had been etched into the stone, the latest in a long series of carvings, many of which were fading away to time.

There is a Latin term called 'De Profundis', which means a cry of anguish. Only three gave such a cry that afternoon. One was his father, who shut himself up in his house to cry a string of curses upon all the dragons in existence. The second was Gobber, whose cries went unheard over the sound of him beating a piece of iron as hard as he possibly could. And the third cry of anguish came from the wind.

It swept through Astrid's hair with a loud shriek as she departed from the funeral. The cold stung her cheeks. It swept through the dried leaves on the ground and the dying grasses that choked the grave markers. It came wailing shrilly through every chink and hole in every house.

But the storm never broke. On the contrary, towards evening the wind died down and the clouds, though grim to behold, lost their menace and promise of foul weather. There was no funerary feast this time, because Stoick would not leave his house and he saw no good reason to throw a feast in Hiccup's memory. Besides, they needed to save their food. So the village settled in for a quiet night.

Stoick went to bed at long last, though he was hardly aware of what he was doing. He felt weary with grief and wanted to end this horrible day. His only real consolation was that Hiccup was probably in Valhalla now. The Valkyries chose warriors who had died in a fight, and since Hiccup had just started to become one and had died fighting a dragon, he hoped they would consider him. In Valhalla he would fight with others all day and feast with them all night, just the kind of life a Viking should have. He would be happy in Valhalla, probably happier than he ever was when he was alive on Berk. And one day, hopefully a long time from how, but given how unpredictable the future was he had no idea, he would probably join him and his wife Valka. He smiled at the thought. If Valka had been allowed into Valhalla, and he had every confidence that she had, she and Hiccup would be meeting for the very first time. Yes, Hiccup's death was a serious blow to him, but perhaps it was for the best.

He had just gotten into bed when he heard someone knocking on the door.

"Oh what now?" he groaned, "Can't I ever go one night without someone wanting something?" Crossly, he went to the door and opened it. There was no one there. He looked left and right and saw no one. Frowning, he closed the door and returned to his room. He had been in bed for a few minutes when the knocking was heard again. He was convinced now that this was a prank, probably engineered by the Thorsten Twins. Still, it could be something important, so he went to look again. Again, he saw no one and went back to bed.

The knocking was heard a third time. This time he decided to ignore it, expecting the Twins to give up once they failed to get a reaction. Instead he heard the knocking a fourth time. He now noticed that it was always the same knock: three light taps equally spaced out. There was no variation to it. Still, he tried to ignore it.

And then there came such a loud and ferocious bang that he jumped out of bed and grabbed his hammer. He had decided that enough was enough, so he stormed to the door and flung it opened. As expected there was no one in sight, but this time he stepped outside and went around the entire house and beyond, expecting to catch the culprit hiding nearby. But there was nothing.

Now his anger turned into confusion. It was true a prankster could easily have run away and hidden somewhere else, but he had neither seen nor heard any evidence that anyone had been near his house except himself. Was he imagining things? Was this perhaps a sign from the Gods? If so, what sign? He wondered if he should go to the Elder about this, but decided against it. Perhaps it was just a bird pecking a hole in the door. It was too dark to tell now, but he would take a look at it the next morning.

He returned home and went back to bed, but he was more alert than usual.

Astrid Hofferson had been asleep for a while. She had been dreaming she was flying with moths amidst decayed snags, and the moths were knocking against her head as if they were woodpeckers. Suddenly she realized that the knocking sound was not in her dream and she woke up with a jolt. Someone was knocking on the door. Her parents had heard it too, for she heard one of them shuffle their way to it over the creaking floorboards and open the door. The hinges needed oiling, for they groaned and squeaked so loudly she thought the whole village must have heard them. A few moments later she heard her father creak back to his room.

"Who was it?" she faintly heard her mother ask.

"There was nobody there,"

"It must've been the Twins. Or maybe Snotlout's up to no good. He's probably been celebrating Hiccup's death and had too much to drink."

"Probably. Scoot over. You're hogging the blankets!"

Astrid chuckled and resumed a more relaxed position. She was just about to fall asleep again when the knocking came again, only this time it seemed louder and more urgent. Her mother got the door this time, only to report nothing.

"People pulling pranks just after a boy's funeral," she muttered, "what's the world come to?"

At that moment the knocking began again, and this time even louder and more urgently than before. This time both adult Hofferson's went outside to search around the house. Astrid shut the front door carefully and waited, hoping she would catch the culprit before they could run away if they came a fourth time. Her patience was rewarded, for she heard, a bit gentler this time, someone knock on the wood three times. She instantly flung the door opened and saw no one. Soon afterwards her parents returned, equally empty-handed and equally perplexed.

Astrid returned to bed. She reached to blow out the candle, only to find the candle was out of reach.

"Odd," she muttered, "I thought I set it down over here."

She decided the knockings had distracted her too much, so she got out of bed and blew out the candle. But when she returned to her bed something felt off, and she realized the blankets had been pulled back up to the head of it, as they were when the bed was not in use. But that made no sense, because she had certainly not made the bed since waking up from the knocking, and she had had no reason to. She now decided she really needed a good night's sleep.

She got into bed and pulled the blankets up and began to doze off. She was half asleep when she realized she was cold, and when she woke up she found out why: the blankets had been pulled off her. She decided she must have kicked them off while asleep and got under them again. But when she laid back she discovered her pillow was gone.

Her temper flared. She was now convinced that Snotlout had slipped into her house somehow and was doing all of this. She reached for the candle. It was not where she had set it down earlier, she could swear to it. As soon as she found it and lit it she shut her door and searched her room, certain Snotlout was hiding somewhere. She found nothing, to her surprise and uneasiness. And when she turned back to her bed she found the pillow back on it and the sheets once again pulled up and neatly arranged, as if she had just made it. But she had not just made it, because she had been searching her room!

And just as she was about to go to her parents, a fierce knock was heard on the door, so fierce it made the whole house shudder. Her parents were out of bed at once and went to the door.

They all went outside. Nobody was out there. With few exceptions, the nearby homes were all dark and lifeless. Somehow, the knocking had not even attracted the attention of any neighbors.

At last they heard the sound of people approaching. Her father raised his lantern and saw the Jorgenson family coming over to them.

"Astrid!" Snotlout said, and he for once did not seem interested in flirting with her. "Have you been hearing it too?"

"Hearing what?" Astrid asked, wanting him to tell them first.

"We keep hearing someone knocking, but every time we've opened the door we've seen nothing. We thought it was the Twins playing some joke on us." Spitelout Jorgenson told them.

"We've been hearing the same," Hofferson said.

"And someone's been messing with my bed!" Snotlout said loudly,

"I told you, you were just dreaming," his father said dismissively.

"I wasn't! I wasn't even asleep! Someone pulled away my blankets and then stole my pillow, and every time I lit the candle I couldn't see anyone!" he grinned, "I was hoping at first it was you, Astrid, come to find consolation in my arms over poor little Useless's death, but I—"

Before Astrid could punch him, as she certainly intended, the lanterns went out, leaving them in total darkness.

"What the—!"

"Stupid breezes! Here, Spitelout, have you got a flint on you?"

"Yes, they're right—at least, I thought they were. I must've dropped 'em."

"Oh good grief,"

"Hey, Astrid, you know what we can do in the dark?"

"Yes I do Snotlout: I can strangle you without any witnesses. Get your hands off me!" she snarled.

"OW! That was totally uncalled for!"

"But I didn't—"

Spitelout finally got his lantern lit and raised it. Snotlout and Astrid were standing nowhere near each other, and they looked incredibly confused once they realized this.

"How'd your nose start bleeding?"

"You punched it of course!" he yelled angrily, "How do you think?"

"I didn't punch it!"

"Oh yes you did! Who else would've done it?"

"Well I didn't. And besides, you deserved it, trying to touch my arm like that! We are not a couple, Snotlout, and I do NOT like it when you pigs try to molest me!"

"I didn't touch your stupid arm!"

"Who else would've done it?" Astrid asked triumphantly.

Snotlout's mother broke in, "Look, you stop punching my boy, alright?"

"Woman, stay out of this. He's old enough to stand up for himself," her husband snapped.

"I'll make Astrid stop punching your boy when he stops molesting my daughter!" Hofferson growled.

"Oh come on, I never do that!"

"Only because I never let you get close enough!" Astrid spat.

"So I flirt with her a little—big deal! You'll appreciate it later."

"You're going to die sad and lonely and soon with that attitude," she said dangerously.

"Whatever. At least my tactics are better than what Useless used to do! He'd just stare at you, all bug-eyed and mouth opened like a fish! Honestly, Berk's better off without that little shrimp, although I will miss having someone I can—"

The lanterns went out again and this time Snotlout screamed.

"Shut up!" Spitelout shouted as he hunted for the flint again, "You sound like a little girl! There's nothing about the dark to be afraid of! And what're you squirming around for like that?"

"Someone stole my belt! I'm 'squirming' to keep my balance while I hold my pants up!"

"Hofferson, this is getting past a joke. Give my son his belt back and stop bothering us!"

"Jorgenson, none of us were even close to your son! How the heck are we supposed to give back something we didn't take?"

Spitelout got his lantern lit again and held it near the ground. Snotlout's belt was lying in the dirt. Astrid denied touching it, and as she was nearly two meters away and behind her mother nobody could see how she could have. Both sides decided they were too tired to argue now, and they were attracting attention. Several people were appearing in their doorways asking what was going on. The matter seemed too silly to spread around so, fuming, they returned to their homes.

Exhausted, Astrid flung herself into bed. Then she realized her blankets were as they should be if she was sleeping on them, but she had left them otherwise.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

In the midst of a driving rainstorm that pounded the roofs relentlessly, overflowed the rain barrels, and turned the flatter areas of Berk into ponds and the slanted areas into running creeks, an assembly gathered in Mead Hall. More people than usual were in attendance, as many were eager to escape from the miserable weather and be somewhere where a warm, cozy fire was roaring.

Stoick looked down at the maps impatiently, trying to deduce where that infernal dragon nest could be. The mark 'X' was all over them. Places they had already searched and eliminated. He had hoped that with so many places marked out they would eventually find the correct place this time around. The death of his son had imbued Stoick with a sense of renewed urgency to find the nest and destroy it. At the same time, he knew if an expedition set out now the ice would settle in before it could return. That was also assuming they had enough seaworthy ships and enough willing hands to man them. He shook his head. No, he had had enough blood on his hands for one year.

"There will be no more searches for the nest until after Thawfest," he announced. A collective sigh of relief came from the assembly. "We must prepare for the coming winter now."

"What about the succession?" Spitelout Jorgenson asked eagerly. Stoick motioned for his brother to come closer so they could talk in low voices. Taking their cue, the Vikings present began having their own private discussions about the succession. As the rain splattered on the ground outside, the hum of voices, a tuneless music of randomness which neither rose nor fell in pitch, was heard on the inside. Everyone was debating the strengths and defects for all the contenders for Stoick's successor and declaring who their favorite was, while at the same time some were discussing plans for their winter storage.

Astrid Hofferson let it be known to those sitting nearest her that she thought Snotlout would make a rotten Chief. She grew indignant to see Fishlegs Ingerman yawning.

"Oh, is my opinion boring you?"

"Sorry," he said as he yawned again, "I just didn't get much sleep last night."

Astrid was curious in spite of herself. "You too?"

"Yeah. Someone kept knocking at the door and running off once we answered. Ruffnut Thorsten said the same thing happened at their house."

Now Astrid was _really_ curious. "It did?"

"Yes. I took note at my house. It happened 5 times. The first four times they knocked thrice, and the last was one exceptionally loud knock. It was so startling I couldn't go back to sleep again." He yawned as if to prove his point.

Felling chilled by this news, Astrid turned away and went over to the great fire. Though the flames roared like a dragon and the logs cackled, and spits with gleaming red apples were roasting away above them, she felt no sensation of warmth from them. But standing near them was about as interesting as joining in the discussions, so she crouched lower and held her hands closer.

She stared into the flames and began to see shapes in them; shapes that only existed for a moment before changing. Faster than human eyes could follow, the flames leapt and fell rapidly and randomly. They were dancing to a beat that only they were aware of, a rhythm that had no regular pattern. The cackling of the logs and the sparks that were blown out was the harsh melody, an unearthly melody as tremulous as the hand infected with palsy.

Suddenly she pulled away. For the briefest of instants she could have sworn she saw a face looking back at her. For the briefest of instants it may have been, yet she had a warrior's eye that allowed her to see and judge rapid movement with clarity, and she had a warrior's conviction that had taught her to go with her instincts. And her instincts told her that she had indeed seen a face in the fire.

Whom the face belong to she knew not. She only saw the general outline of the head, a hard mouth line that stretched into a tight frown, and two blazing and penetrating eyes that had looked right at hers.

She looked into the flames again but saw nothing unusual. She was uncertain if she wanted to see the face again, to prove that she had not been imagining it, or if she would have preferred to never see it again. Uneasily she looked around her, wondering if someone else might have seen it, but nobody was paying the slightest attention to her or the fireplace. She looked for a third time and decided she must have just been so tired her eyes were playing tricks on her. So she returned to her seat and tried to focus on the discussions going on.

Stoick finally pulled away from his brother and revolved his way back to the assembly. "I see no reason to beat around the bush. I have decided there is no one better to succeed me than my nephew, Snotlout Jorgenson."

From the congregation came groans, cheers, and some cries of "I knew it!" At Spitelout's urging, Snotlout stood up, his head raised high and his chest puffed out like a cockerel, and went to join his Uncle's side.

"I know this may not be the most popular decision I've ever made," Stoick went on, "But he is the obvious choice for the position, and I promise you all I can teach him the ropes before my time comes."

"And remember: Hiccup would've been a lot worse!" Snotlout laughed snidely. The laughter from the crowd was just starting when suddenly Snotlout recoiled away from the table, crying loudly with surprise. He stumbled on a chair and fell over onto the floor, after banging the side of his head on the table. The laughter from the crowd commenced in full, though it was mixed with the groans of Vikings thinking "And _this_ is our next Chief."

Spitelout pulled his son off the floor and tried to laugh with the crowd, to make it look like a simple accident and nothing more. But Snotlout did not find it funny. Clutching his nose, he looked about the assembly furiously. "Who hit me? Who did it? C'mon, out with it! Who attacked their future Chief?"

Everyone looked around in confusion.

"Snotlout, nobody hit you," Fishlegs said.

Snotlout removed his hand from his nose. People gasped. His nose was bright red, clearly indicating it had very recently been struck.

"But that's not possible!" Ruffnut Thorsten exclaimed, "Nobody touched you! You must have hurt it in the fall."

"No I didn't! I fell on my side, not my nose!"

"But nobody touched you!" Fishlegs insisted, looking at those near him for support, "we all saw it, right? He insulted Hiccup and suddenly he fell over. Nobody touched his nose!" There were murmurs of agreement.

"Yeah, he just insulted Hiccup and then he—" but now Tuffnut Thorsten yelped and a hand flew to his cheek. "What's the big idea, Ruff?"

"What was?"

"You slapped me!"

"No I didn't! I'm not even on the correct side, dummy!"

"Well somebody slapped me! Who was it?" Tuffnut's cheek was indeed red like Snotlout's nose. Yet in both cases, although there had been an entire multitude of witnesses, nobody had seen anyone actually hit them.

Old Mildew the cabbage farmer suddenly shrieked, making everyone jump. "Who did that?"

"Who did what?" Stoick demanded.

"Who pinched me? Someone pinched me arm!"

"Probably a tick," Stoick said dismissively, "Now enough of this. I need to know how much food each individual household has so I want—oh now what?"

Someone had banged on Mead Hall's massive oak doors. Stoick told the nearest Viking to see what was going on and ask why the knocker could not just enter themselves. His doorman came back to inform them that there was nobody at the doors. Only then did Stoick realize that the doors had been struck with the same pattern as the night before: three raps, repeated four times, and a single knock. Only this time the knocks had been louder and with fewer pauses.

The Hoffersons and Ingermans had separately picked up the pattern as well. They exchanged confused looks with others in the assembly. One more curiosity to add to the mixture was the fact that the Thorsten Twins, who had been the most obvious suspects for a prank like this, were in plain sight, nowhere near the doors, and were just as perplexed as everyone else.

The knocking began again, but this time it came from the wall and there was no pattern. It was dancelike but irregular; sometimes the knocks came in triplets and other times in groups of twos, as if the knocker was tapping out the beat to a song no one else could hear. The knocks started from the wall on the left and moved around the hall until they reached the fireplace, and from there they suddenly jumped to the opposite side of the room and went around the hall again in the other direction. When they reached the fireplace again they stopped.

Everyone looked around uncertainly and exhaled.

"What was that all about?" someone asked.

Before anyone could answer every wall began shaking, as if they were about to fall over. Just as suddenly as it began it stopped.

Now the assembly was beginning to get _very_ nervous.

"Was that an earthquake?"

"Who's outside who could be doing this?"

"I've got some work to do at home,"

Stoick raised a hand for silence. "I don't know what's going on, but I assure you all, this is probably some joke someone's playing on us. There is nothing to be worried about." He turned to Gothi, "Right?"

Gothi paused and looked around, sniffing the air.

"Does anyone else smell that?" Gobber asked.

"It smells like salt,"

"A lot of it!" Spitelout Jorgenson gagged.

Hofferson turned to one of the tribal butchers, "Are you preserving something? Is that why we smell this?"

"Yes, but not in here. We use a special cellar for salting, not the hall,"

Stoick turned to Gothi again, "Is this some sign from the Gods? What are they trying to tell us? What is going on?"

All eyes were on Gothi now. They were all convinced that if anyone could answer such questions it would be her. Her, the diminutive gray woman with the long staff who never spoke. She was the oldest person on Berk; she had been born during the waning years of Stoick's grandfather.

Stoick bowed his head respectfully. "Gothi, out of all of us, you are the most sensitive to the will of the Gods. What is it they are saying? What is the cause of these disturbances?"

Gothi paused a second time and went to a box of sand. As she always did, she traced runes into the sand with her staff, leaving them for someone else to translate. Gobber usually took the job. It often gave him difficulty but not this time.

He looked up at the villagers worriedly. "She says 'I don't know,'"

The multitude was dumbfounded as the implications of those three words sank in. If Gothi did not know the answer to what was going on, who did?

Stoick shook his head. "Well, if this is not a sign from the Gods, then obviously this is some joke someone is playing on us! Who is not present in the hall right now?"

"My brother—but he's out fishing,"

"My wife's looking after the children,"

"Sven is not here, but he's got his sheep to tend to,"

Tuffnut said, "Hiccup isn't here—oh right, he's dead, he can't be here."

Before Stoick could react, an ear piercing screeching sound was heard. It sounded like something hard scrapping along glass and it sent chills up and down every spine. This was the final straw. The Vikings flung their hands over their ears and rushed for the doors. Stoick and Gothi were the only two left in the room.

Stoick turned again to the Elder. She had seldom seen him look at her so pleadingly. "Gothi, have you no answers for me?"

She shook her head. A wall shook slightly.

"Perhaps the building has grown unstable," Stoick said thoughtfully, "I'll get some carpenters to inspect it. Yes, that must be what's wrong. The last raid must've weakened the structure. Yes, that makes sense. Perhaps that's what the Gods are trying to tell us." He laughed with relief and departed to get some carpenters.

But Gothi looked unconvinced, because she realized that a collapsing structure had no reason to smell like salt, nor did it explain how some people had been pinched and hit by nothing.

"Has anyone else noticed something?" Fishlegs asked some time later, "Stoick's hardly mentioned Hiccup this whole time. Ever since the funeral he been acting as if Hiccup never existed,"

Ruffnut sounded indifferent and distant. "So?"

"Maybe he's in denial or something," Tuffnut added. "And maybe people should learn to mind their own business." He spoke in such a blunt and threatening manner that Fishlegs changed the subject.

"So…Snotlout's the next Chief, huh?"

"Oh can you imagine all the trouble he'll let us cause?" Tuffnut said gleefully, "We could blow up half the village and he'll be powerless to stop us!"

Ruffnut gave a halfhearted cheer.

"What's eating you?" her brother asked sharply.

"Nothing," she walked away, not paying attention to the rain or anyone who crossed her path.

"What's up with her?" Tuffnut asked.

"How should I know? _You're_ her brother."

"So?"

Fishlegs rolled his eyes. He was about to bring up another point he wanted to talk to somebody about, but he wondered why he was bothering to share his knowledge with the Twins, of all people, so he walked away as well.

But once he had left Tuffnut he was stuck wondering who he should talk to. His parents were busy, as was often the case, the people his own age were bullies or jerks and unlikely to take heed of him, as Tuffnut had just demonstrated, the younger Vikings were too young to understand and the older ones were unlikely to listen.

"Hiccup probably knew what this feels like," he muttered, "having something to share and nobody to share it with. But Hiccup at least had Gobber—say, that's not a bad idea!"

So he went to the forge, where the smith was hard at work sharpening swords, switching his false limbs out over and over again, and hammering away.

"Can I help you, lad?"

Fishlegs shook his head and sat down. Gobber looked perplexed but went on with his work. He had a lot to do and now that his apprentice was gone he had to do it all without assistance.

"So what's up with ya?"

"I'm just wondering a few things, Gobber. It's about Hiccup."

Gobber paused only marginally, "Oh?"

Now that he was there, Fishlegs was uncertain how to begin, so he repeated his observation about Stoick's apparent lack of remorse where Hiccup was concerned.

"Lad, Stoick's the Chief. When he's running the village he's gotta put his emotions aside and concentrate on our problems, not his own," Gobber retorted. In truth he hoped he was right, for Stoick's emotionless demeanor had struck him as well. He also hoped very much that Hiccup's death did not push Stoick over the edge and prompt him to make a rash decision where the Dragon nest was concerned. "I assure you, lad, he does miss his son. He just doesn't want the rest of us to see that side of him."

"Why not?"

"Leaders who get visibly emotional don't inspire confidence."

"His son just died—we'd all understand!"

"Would we?" Gobber asked bitterly. He knew a lot of the village had celebrated Hiccup's disappearance and death.

"Touching on Hiccup's death, we never found his body, right?"

"Aye," Gobber said heavily. "And since a dragon killed him, it's unlikely we ever will find it,"

Fishlegs paled slightly. "Gobber, you know what they say about the dead, right? That without a proper burial they might—"

"We gave him a proper burial."

"Did we? I don't really think carving his name onto a rock counts."

Gobber hesitated. "All right. I don't know if we gave him a proper burial or not. But what can we do about it? Without a body he can never have one, and we'll never find his body since a dragon took it. You must know that, lad, so what brought all this up?"

"Did you notice that Snotlout was hit by unseen hands when he insulted Hiccup?"

Gobber eyed him sharply. "What are you saying exactly?"

Gobber's expression made Fishlegs lose his nerve. He suddenly wondered if Gobber would dismiss his idea as surely as everyone else would. He muttered feebly "Nothing important," and walked away into the rain, leaving a very bewildered Gobber behind him.

The coming of the night was hardly noticeable given how dimly lit the day had been. At least the rain had stopped around the early evening. The Hoffersons ate dinner in their own house, for the carpenters were still examining Mead Hall. The Hofferson adults then went to meet with the Chief while Astrid went out to do her exercises, which she always performed regardless of the weather or ground conditions. She did not return home until it was after dark.

Although the rain had ended at last, the sky was covered with hazy and impenetrable dark mauve colored clouds. There were few candles lit around the village, and the light produced by the few was feeble; deeply insufficient to brighten the walkways between homes or to discern the identity of shadows and dark shapes that existed in every corner of the village at night.

The village itself was eerily quiet, almost as it had been before the ships had returned. Since the carpenters had not finished examining Mead Hall, Stoick was conducting business in his own house, which was apart from the rest of the village, and nobody had a common gathering place to meet and drink in. So there were considerably fewer people than usual out and about tonight. Astrid felt alone and isolated, even though there were homes to her right and left; cold, quiet, dark homes that offered no welcome or protection from the unpredictable night. She was not one to be afraid of the dark, but she was nevertheless more alert than usual. No further incidents occurred during this dreary day since the events in Mead Hall, but it was at nearly this exact time the night before that the knockings had begun, and this knowledge made her deeply uneasy. She could not help but wonder what was in store for them this time.

She made her way up to her door and unlocked it. As she opened it she looked about her. The ground was muddy, which made her smile. If someone did show up to knock and run away, they would leave footprints. A person clever enough to evade detection thus far might also be clever enough to realize this, but that meant no disturbances tonight. Either way she won, and, considerably reassured, she shut the door and lit a candle.

Despite feeling reassured, she decided to examine the house just in case. She hated searching through the dimly lit house, but she dared not light candles everywhere for fear of risking a fire. For some reason, although she had been in this house all her life and knew every nook and cranny, the darkness and the minimal candlelight seemed to change it. Objects in the rooms appeared immense and sinister. The air felt cold. She heard the occasional drip of rainwater falling from the eaves outside and the sound of the house settling. In such an atmosphere as this these harmless sounds were magnified by her imagination and transformed into something ominous.

Abruptly she shook her head to clear her mind of these thoughts, and her gaze fell upon the candle she was holding. The face she had seen earlier that day returned to her recollection. She stared at the solitary flame, as if expecting a pair of eyes to stare back at her from it.

She shook her head again. "This is stupid! It's a dark house. There's nothing unusual about it, and if I lit more candles it would look perfectly fine! I'm not afraid of anything, least of all a bunch of knocking sounds!"

She marched up to her room, shut the door loudly, and proceeded to turn in for the night. But she made certain to look around her room once again. She still suspected Snotlout might have been the culprit from the night before, and she had no difficulty imagining that his notion that he could get away with anything had been inflated by his recent ascension. So it would not have surprised her to find him concealed in her room.

She had no way of knowing it, but she need not have worried. In the Jorgenson household Snotlout was fast asleep, snoring loudly in an inebriated manner. A goblet was lying on the floor next to him amidst a small, drying up pool of ale.

In the Thorsten household the atmosphere was subdued, which was highly out of the ordinary. Normally the Twins would stir up a ruckus, but tonight Ruffnut just stared at the fire blankly.

"What's gotten into you today?" her brother demanded, "You didn't show the slightest interest when I brought up the plans to make Mead Hall's roof cave in!"

It was a while before she responded. "Sorry. I just don't feel right."

"Are you sick?"

"No just…worried about something. It concerns Hiccup."

"What about the bony stiff?"

Ruffnut looked at him nervously, "Do we know for certain how he died?"

"Yeah, a dragon killed him." her brother said dismissively, "Why?"

"I don't know, it's just…he died under strange circumstances, and now all these knockings and pinches are going on and I'm just wondering what the connection is."

Her brother shrugged. "The Chief said Mead Hall was just old and needs repairs."

"But what about what happened to our house last night? This place was rebuilt in the spring; it can't need repairs already! So what was going on last night? And it wasn't just our house either—Astrid's, Fishlegs, Snotlout's, and I heard the Chief's house too, they all heard someone knocking at the door and nobody was there! How do you explain that?"

"How do you?"

Ruffnut looked at him fretfully. "I don't know. And that makes me nervous."

"Oh you've probably just got an upset stomach or something. Just go to bed and tomorrow we can go over the plans. Say—if the Chief's gonna tear down Mead Hall to rebuild it, do you think he'd let us do the honors?"

Ruffnut replied she was not sleepy and continued to stare into the fire.

Astrid was staring at her reflection in a small, cracked mirror as she washed her face and undid the braids in her golden hair. She gazed at her face and saw a lovely 15 year old girl gaze right back. She was near the marrying age now and she wondered, apprehensively, who her husband would be.

The candle suddenly went out, plunging the room into darkness.

She froze. She could hear something. It was not a knock. It was laughter. It started out incredibly faint but quickly grew in volume. An uneasy feeling came to her stomach and she went to the door, only to find it locked.

Now she began to really worry, but before she could cry for help she was rooted to the spot with these words from unseen lips.

"It's time we talked, Astrid, and this time without any stammering."


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note:**

 **To the Guest who sent me this:**

"If you have plans for this "ghost"/Hiccup to do anything cruel or abusive to Astrid, please say so now. Also if any strong abuse, torture or rape/attempted rape is to happen, please, PLEASE, put a "trigger" warning on the next chapter. For myself, if any of these things are to occur, then I am done with this story as there is enough of this kind of stuff incurring in the REAL world-I don't need to read about it in fanfiction. Period."

 **In that case, I feel I must advise you to drop the story.**

 **While Astrid's midnight visitor does NOT attempt to rape her, several things that you have mentioned do get brought up in upcoming chapters**

 **And if the Guest who sent me this message also sent a later review asking about it (seriously, does anybody know of a better way to respond to Guest Reviews?) I apologize, but the first review was accidentally deleted.**

 **Chapter 3**

Astrid looked around wildly. "Who are you and what do you want? Where are you hiding?"

The voice chuckled nastily. It made the hair on her neck stand on end.

"Do you really not recognize my voice? I suppose it does sound a bit different than it used to, but even so…"

There _was_ something familiar about the voice, which in her anxiety she had not noticed until now. It was high pitched but masculine, and had a nasally sound to it. But that meant it belonged to—

" _Hiccup_?"

"Oh she remembers now! But then again, she normally 'doesn't care about what people do', now does she? Does this qualify as 'weirder' for you?"

"Oh my Gods, it _is_ you!" she would have dropped into a chair if there had been one near enough. "But—where are you?" She fumbled trying to light the candle.

"Don't bother with that. At this stage you can't see me even in broad daylight."

"At _this_ stage?"

"Well, sure. It takes a little time for a ghost to become visible to the living."

"A ghost! You're a _ghost_? That's why you're…still here?"

"Well what did you expect?" He was no longer sounding maliciously playful, but downright angry. "My funeral was carried out without a body! You know what that means, right? It means I never got a proper burial, and without a proper burial my soul can't move onto the afterlife—Helheimr, Valhalla, they're all shut to me!" He screamed in anguish. "Shut! Do you understand? I am condemned to exist as a ghost _forever_! Forever! I get to watch everyone I've ever known age and die and pass on while I stay here! I'll still look like a fifteen year old boy a thousand years from now! I'm being forced to keep on living even though I'm not even _alive_!" Abruptly his tone became sharper and much more sinister. "So since I'm condemned to an eternity in this world, I've decided to first spend my time figuring out how I died—"

Astrid forced herself to stay calm, despite the insane situation, and said gently, "You were taken by a dragon. It caught and killed you."

"Oh I know all about that little story. It's a really charming fairy tale. You Vikings think you're so clever, or maybe you just believe what you'd like to believe, but you got it completely wrong. I wasn't killed by any dragon."

"Wrong? But then how did you die?"

He laughed harshly. "I'll keep that to myself for a little while longer, if you don't mind. You guys never cared much about my secrets before, so it shouldn't bother you now. Oh but wait, you did care about one secret, didn't you? You cared so much about figuring out how I was beating you in Dragon Training."

"Yes I did," Astrid acknowledge, "Those tricks you pulled were amazing, Hiccup. I wanted to know how you did them."

"Liar. You only wanted to prove me a cheater so you could be number one again. It was never anything to you except getting first prize. Well congratulations, you got it. By default, perhaps, but you still got it, and that's better than the prize _I_ received."

She spoke sharply, "You're a lot ruder than you were when you were alive."

"How would you know? How many times did I actually say anything to you?"

"Not often," she admitted, "But you were still a lot more nervous! It couldn't hurt you to show a little courtesy, you know."

Hiccup laughed mirthlessly. "Hurt me? What can hurt a ghost? You can't even see me! I've realized a few things since I died. I realized you people have nothing to threaten me with now! What are you going to do, punch me? Shove an axe in my face? Have my dad send me to my room without supper? I can say what I like and there's not a thing any of you Vikings can do about it, and for once you're going to listen to me!"

Astrid began to feel nervous again. This was a Hiccup she had never known, one who had no qualms about being harsh to them. She saw that he was right, that there was nothing they could do to stop him from tormenting every Viking on Berk forever. Unless there were weaknesses she did not know about.

"Oh really?" she said dryly, trying to get a rise out of him so he might let something slip, "Well I'll bet you can't hurt me either!"

"You're partly right,"

"I am?"

"Yes. As a ghost, I cannot give or take any life. At least, not directly," he added with a nasty chuckle, "I suppose I could knock somebody unconscious on a beach and let them drown when the tide came in, but I could not actually drown them myself."

Astrid was horrified. "You wouldn't!"

"Why not?" he asked nonchalantly, "At any rate, while I can't give or take life, I can still touch you,"

She suddenly felt a pair of unseen fingers touch her cheek. She gasped, for they had the texture of a vapor and were cold as ice.

"So beautiful," Hiccup said softly as he gently stroked the side of her face, "like the Lorelei who fills men with burning passion as she lures them to her rock and watches them drown. Oh Astrid, when I was alive I'd have given anything just to hear a word of kindness from you. If you had only shown the slightest interest in me as a friend, I would have told you everything at once. And now here we are, when things such as love are completely futile for me."

Astrid did not allow herself to feel pity. She had taught herself to suppress that emotion a very long time ago. Instead she wished to learn more.

"Hiccup, could you tell me something? I can't imagine you're the first corpse to go unburied, so how is it I've never encountered another ghost before?"

Suddenly the unseen fingers were around her throat and tightening. "Look at you…as uncaring as ever. I think I was only ever attracted to you physically. Certainly you never gave me a reason to love your _great personality_. Even now you'd rather satisfy your own curiosity than offer a few words of comfort! But I'll let it slide. I shouldn't have expected anything less, and a few words of comfort can't help me now. So you really want to know what happens, do you? All right then, look!"

She felt the hands leave her neck. The window was flung opened. An unseen hand grabbed her arm and pulled her towards it.

It was just the sides of some houses and the pathways in between them. "Hiccup, I don't see anything."

"Not yet you don't—but wait!"

She thought she saw a silvery hand pass in front of her eyes like a veil in the wind, though in the darkness she could not be certain of what she saw. She looked out the window again and saw a multitude of gray shapes, all of them distinctly humanoid. Some were flying through the air and others were wandering around on the ground. All of them had an air of aimlessness about them. Several were crying out, though she heard nothing, lamenting their fate as if hoping the Gods would hear them and take pity and let them expire for good. The ones in the air rose rapidly and vanished into the night, but for each one that disappeared another two were right behind them.

"Where are they going?" she asked hoarsely.

"Wherever they want," he replied bitterly, "Though they can't leave Berk now. Only when the tide is at its highest and lowest can we cross over running water. At times like now, islands like this one are a prison—rather like how it is for the living,"

"But why haven't we seen them before now? Why haven't they revealed themselves or—I don't know, why hasn't anyone ever seen them?"

"They have. Not you, perhaps, but now and then somebody will glimpse a poltergeist. You've heard stories when you were younger, and they're probably all true, to an extent. But the ghosts who end up passing through here don't bother you much because most of them got bored with playing jokes on humans a long time ago. I suspect I'll be sick and tired of knocking on doors and blowing out candles within a few years too."

"So that _was_ you. I thought so, just now,"

"Fishlegs thought so pretty quickly. But he was always much smarter than you, especially when it comes to lore. But most of the ghosts here are just passing through. They're waiting for the tides to change so they can go to other islands."

"And that's what they do each night?"

"And day. We fly around and look at the world, a world we can't be a part of anymore. And that's pretty much all a ghost can do—except for those like me, who have a little unfinished business to attend to."

Astrid turned away from the window and inhaled nervously. "Business?"

The window shut with a snap. "I'm going to find out how what happened. And I'm going to pay Berk back for killing my best friend and ruining our lives."

"Killing your—what? You mean someone _else_ has died? Hiccup—oh my gods—Hiccup, what have you done?"

" _I_ haven't done a thing! I can't give or take life, remember? And yes, someone else has died—he died with me, but since he wasn't a human there's no afterlife in existence to accept or deny him." Hiccup sniffed, "If he was a ghost too, I'd happily spend an eternity flying around with him. We'd leave Berk behind forever and see every corner of the world. But we can't." He started sobbing, "We can't! He's gone forever! The only friend I've ever made in over 10 _years_ , the best friend I've ever had, and I'll never see him again!"

Astrid's mind was racing as she tried to think of who Hiccup was talking about. Had Hiccup befriend some animal in the village, like a dog or a cow? That was the only explanation she could conceive of. And yet how could that be? She had never seen Hiccup interact with the animals on Berk; they had avoided him almost as much as the humans had.

"Who was your friend?" she asked.

The sobs stopped. "I'm not saying, because the second I do you'll vilify him and spout a bunch of worthless lies that you've spent years swallowing. I know perfectly well people here have been rejoicing at my death and recalling how much of a nuisance I've been, and so help me, I am not going to let them say worse things about him!"

"Who?"

"Wouldn't _you_ like to know?" he laughed callously. Now for the first time she was certain she could see part of him. She could see his eyes, but they were not the forest green shade they had been when life had coursed through them. Now they were light gray, bobbing in the darkness like tinted will-o-wisps, burning like gray embers. Even the face in the fire had felt less menacing than these orbs which seemed to pierce right through her, and she fell backwards and nearly stumbled over her chair, which she seized and clung to.

"The Fearless Astrid Hofferson afraid of a phantom. Is it because you can't hurt me that you feel scared? Or is it because you don't know what I'm capable of that scares you?"

She took a deep breath. "I'm not afraid of you,"

"Perhaps you should be."

"You said yourself you can't kill me. What have I to fear?"

He laughed sadly. "Oh Astrid, my beautiful and brave Astrid, there are things in existence much worse than death. I learned that when I was alive, and I've learned that now. Death wasn't the nightmare; it was what came before and afterwards. And I'm going to let Berk have a taste of that nightmare."

"Hiccup, let's be reasonable—"

"Reasonable?" he screamed, causing her to cling to her chair tighter, "Reasonable! Where was this reasonableness when we were children? Where the reasonableness when Snotlout and the Twins beat me up every other night? Where was the reasonableness when my own father wouldn't listen to a word I said? Where was the reasonableness when you ordered me to figure out which side I was on, only to turn on me once I started appearing to be firmly on yours? 'Figure out which side you're on', but instead of welcoming a new comrade in arms, you wanted to get my secrets out of me by force! How was any of that reasonable? It's always reasonable when you get what _you_ want, isn't it? Well now it's my turn!"

"And will revenge make you feel any better? Will it help you?"

"I'll never know until I try, I suppose,"

"What became of the sweet boy I once played with?"

"I'm flattered. You haven't brought up that sort of thing for so long I thought you'd forgotten that boy." His tone softened, "think of it, Astrid. To never again taste your favorite food, to never feel the warmth of a fire on a cold winter's night, to never smell the fresh rain in an evening in the spring, to never play with your best friend and never feel any attraction towards someone who once captivated you; to feel as dead inside as you are in reality and to know that nothing can change it—yes, I'd split the island in half if it could save me."

The eyes disappeared and she heard him sobbing again, "Let me die for real, please Odin! I can't stand it!"

Desiring to distract him, Astrid glanced out the window, saw nothing out of the ordinary, and told him so.

"Yes, I know," he said heavily. "I had to help you see them that time. Without the help from a ghost, you'd only see one if they allowed it. But I can see them. I can see every single one of the poor wretches out there. I hear them calling to whatever God they believe in to have pity on them, as I just did. Even those who have existed for a hundred centuries still cry out, even though they know it's hopeless. And they'll cry out for another hundred centuries and beyond it."

"I'm sorry, Hiccup," Astrid said, "Is there anything I can do?"

"A little kindness! The night is full of surprises, isn't it? It's a nice offer, but it comes too late, like most aid does, I think. It's only after the disaster happens that people realize the mistakes they made and what should really have been done."

They heard the door to the house open and the voices of her parents as they entered the main room.

"I'll be going then. I doubt you'll want your parents to find you seemingly talking to yourself, or have them discover what's really going on,"

"What will you do?" she asked anxiously, "Hiccup, please, whatever grudge you hold against Berk—"

"That's putting it mildly. I've hated this place for years."

"Well, what I mean is—can't you forgive us, please?"

"You have no right to ask that."

"Hiccup, by whatever love you once may have had for me, I'm begging you, _please_ , to spare your old village!"

"Well, since you said 'please', I guess I could reconsider…or not!" He chuckled. It sounded so much like the Hiccup she had known she for a second forgot he was not alive. "Goodnight, Astrid. I'll be seeing you later, don't worry. I'm not going anywhere for a while yet." His tone was not reassuring in the slightest, quite the contrary, in fact.

She waited expectantly for a minute, but there was nothing but silence in her room. She could hear the creaking of the wooden floorboards her parents were walking on as they went to bed. The footsteps stopped for a moment just outside her door, perhaps debating to check on her, but then they resumed their slow and quiet walk. It felt so strange. She had just had a long and ominous talk with a ghost of a boy she had known her whole life, yet others beyond her room were acting as normally as ever, as if nothing in the world was wrong.

She suddenly felt exhausted and wanted nothing better than to get into bed. Perhaps she already was in bed and this was all a dream. She was about to change her shirt when she paused and looked around the room suspiciously.

She heard Hiccup laugh. "I thought you'd do that, so I opted to stick around and reassure you. You needn't worry about me spying on you. Once you're dead and no longer have urgings to reproduce, the attractions of the flesh become nonexistent; bodies mean absolutely nothing. I imagine Snotlout would be devastated if he became a ghost. But then again, perhaps every ghost is devastated one way or another. Well, goodnight, Astrid. You can change your clothes without fear. Sleep well."

"Oh, like I'm going to sleep soundly after all of _this_?" Astrid demanded.

"If you even think for one moment of gesturing to all of me I'll keep you awake all night."

"You probably already will!" she said, forcing her voice stay low, "How am I supposed to sleep knowing there's a ghost in my room?"

"Well, very soon there won't be. And perhaps you should consider yourself lucky you can sleep at all."

Those words were scarcely reassuring, but they were the last she heard from Hiccup that night. But she did not get to sleep for a very long time, and when she did, after much restless tossing and turning, even while asleep she found no peace or relief.

Before retiring for the night, Stoick had decided to make one more examination of the village. It was always a prudent thing to do, for dragon raids could come at any moment and raids from other Vikings was always a possibility. He went to one of the Watchtowers and scanned the horizon as best as he could.

"Not a ship or beast in sight, sir," the Lookout said.

"Still, a second set of eyes can't hurt," he replied. He paused and pointed. "What's that?"

"Sir?"

"Look, down there!" He grabbed the man and pointed at a large rock that rose from the beach. He had seen something luminous and ghastly down there, rather like a Flightmare, except it was had the form of a human. He had only seen it for a few moments and the Lookout had not seen a thing. He looked uneasily at his Chief, half wondering if Stoick's mind was wholly intact.

"I don't see anything, Chief,"

"I'm sure I did—well, perhaps my eyes are playing tricks on me."

"That could be, sir,"

"Well, keep a sharp lookout, and if anything happens let me know at once."

"As we always do," the Lookout muttered once his Chief was out of earshot.

Hiccup drifted across the beach and made his way towards the Cove at Raven Point. It was odd to think he did not have to walk anymore. He had felt himself become visible for a few brief moments, flickering between visibility and invisibility like a candle drowning in its own wax, but it had passed and he now could only be seen by other ghosts, who left him to himself. He preferred it that way.

He watched the black waters rolled onto the island and recede over and over again. How welcoming the water looked, now more than ever before, but he knew he could not approach it. If he did he would feel horribly feverish, for reasons he did not know nor understand.

For a brief moment, looking over the sea, he thought he saw his best friend flying in the night sky. His happiness shattered like a piece of overheated iron when he realized it was nothing and remembered that his friend was gone. More than ever he wanted to fling himself into the ocean and end it, as it had happened once before, but when he got near the water he began to feel dizzy and he back away, gasping for air even though he had no need of it any longer.

It was still hard to imagine that from now on he would not need the things that in life had been so important. And to know that the coming day would bring no relief or change, to know that nothing would come with a new dawn, _every_ new dawn for the rest of the world's existence and maybe even beyond that, it was almost unendurable to him. No wonder all the stories about ghosts featured them in a depressing light, who would _not_ be depressed to have such an existence forced upon them?

He reached the cove and briefly calmed down. It felt more like home to him than the Haddock house ever had and the memories it held for him made him smile.

"Here's where I first touched him," he muttered, "hah, the ground over here is still charred." He chuckled softly. He looked around, half anticipating his friend to come happily bounding towards him, pounce on him, and give him a big lick.

But there was nothing.

He started breaking down and his unseen form shook with tearless sobs. "Why? Why, Toothless? Why?" He could not hold it in any longer and screamed at the night sky. "WHY?"

With a great exertion of strength he got a grip on himself. "I know you can't hear me anymore, Bud, but I'll find out who shot that boulder at us and I'll pay them back for what they did to you." He laughed harshly, "Hey, you know, a ghost could rule the world forever! No opponents could assassinate or harm him, he'd never have to worry about the succession, no secret could be kept from his unseen ears; the world and everyone in it would be completely under his control and forced to do his bidding, why that would…be completely boring and lonely." He shook his head as if to ward off a fly. "No, no, I don't want that. Though I wonder why no one else has ever tried it. I should steal a journal and start recording my experiences for posterity. I wonder if I can actually write." He looked down at his hands, which were visible only to him. "I know I can pick up objects, but I've only been moving them around. Well, I'll find out later. It's not like I'm pressed for time."

He thought about his plans and who he would punish the most. When he reached Astrid's name he hesitated. "Perhaps I've already punished her enough. Maybe? Oh, Astrid. If you had only…but in a way I'm almost glad you never reciprocated my feelings. It would just make this even harder, for both of us. And yet…" he idly wondered about engineering her death so she could join him as a ghost, but at once he dropped the idea. He knew she would never forgive him for such a thing, nor did he believe he would forgive himself either. And now that he was a ghost he was not really in love with her anymore. It was only his memories of her that prompted these thoughts. In fact, being a ghost and detached somewhat from the natural world he wondered if he ever had been in love with her.

"She really is like a Lorelei. She bewitched me and my desire to impress her, and others, led to me shooting down Toothless. So, in a messed up way, it was my passion for her that led to this."

He began sobbing again.


	4. Chapter 4

Author's Note:

Now then, to my Guest reviewer, you complain that I am not keeping in canon. How much Fanfiction actually does? For the record, I never had any intention in following canon for this story. I am following a narrative thread roughly derived from a piece of music I like by a composer I greatly admire.

As to why I felt compelled to write it this way, perhaps it's because I can get into dark, haunted, and depressing moods myself and I wanted to express such thoughts in my writing. Or perhaps it's because I have grown bored with writing fluffy little comic stories and want to try something at the other extreme.

I am writing things the way I want them. I believe I am still allowed to do that.

 **Chapter 4**

The following morning Stoick rose early, according to his custom. He glanced at Hiccup's old room, momentarily wondering if he should wake the boy up, but then he remembered that the boy was dead. With a short sigh he made his way out the door.

It was a raw day. The ground was muddy from the previous day's rain and a low fog was wafting around the coastline. He sent an order to the watchmen to light the beacons and be on the lookout for possible wrecks, and then walked over to Mead Hall to see how the carpenters were progressing on its repairs.

"So far, sir, we've found nothing wrong with it," one carpenter announced.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes sir! Positive!"

Stoick frowned, wondering what could have made the noises if not the structure's instability. "Check it again, just to be certain."

"But we—yes sir."

Stoick nodded approvingly. He saw Astrid approaching him, looking like she wanted to talk. "Morning, Lass,"

"Good morning, Chief,"

"You're looking worried about something. What's on your mind? If it's the noises with Mead Hall, don't worry, we're getting them checked out."

From the moment Astrid had woken up she had wondered if she should tell Stoick that she knew the true cause of those sounds and every other strange thing that had happened on Berk in the past few days, but she guessed what would happen if she did. Either Stoick would assume she was joking and laugh or he would assume she was going crazy and, in the best case scenario, would have one of the Elders examine her. No, the only way Stoick was going to learn about Hiccup being a ghost would have to come from Hiccup himself. She had to wonder why Hiccup had not already revealed himself to Stoick, but that was not her problem to worry about.

But there was something else that she was wondering about, and in that case she felt there was no reason why she could not look into finding an answer. "Chief, I was wondering if I could look through some of Hiccup's journals."

Stoick's eyes narrowed. "And why are you wondering that?"

"I wish to confirm a few…a few things he told me when he…when he was alive," Stoick assumed the pauses in mid-sentence were simply brought on by her grief, when in fact they were brought on by her trying to tell the truth and lie at the same time.

Stoick shook his head. "Sorry, lass, but I don't see the need to go through his things. I don't even know where he keeps—kept—all his journals. Besides, we've got other things to worry about today than what Hiccup said." He turned away and went off to examine the food stores.

But Astrid was not one to give up, even when the Chief himself had ordered her to. She decided the Chief would have allowed this had he but known her true motives, so she decided to have a look anyway, in spite of his orders.

Still, she would have to be discreet about this, and because she knew that Hiccup had had a small work area in the forge, she decided to try there first, so she would not have to break into the Chief's house unless she had to.

Gobber was in, hard at work as usual. Astrid simply told him she was looking to examine some weapons and he soon became lost in his concentration and forgot about her. She slipped past a ragged curtain and into the small storage space Hiccup had taken over.

She had never actually been in here before. The walls were full of nail holes and showed signs that parchment had been hung there for long stretches of time, yet there was nothing hanging on them now. She saw three piles of parchment on the small desk and guessed Hiccup had been cleaning out his drawings before his death. Unsure of where to start she began glancing at his work.

The larger pile was almost entirely made up of weapon designs. Complex catapults, bola launchers, crossbows, and all sorts of intricate machines, the ones she had known to be more likely to destroy Berk than a dragon. The middle pile contained similar drawings, as well as other schematics and sketches, ranging from sword designs to charcoal sketches of people. The third and smallest pile had a few similar sketches, but it also had numerous sketches of dragons, including one species she was completely unfamiliar with. Unfortunately, Astrid was not the most literate Viking and could not make out the untidy scrawls in the corners of these drawings.

One thing that caught her attention was that Hiccup himself was not featured in any of the drawings. Even in the drawings of the teens on fire duty and in dragon training he was absent. Was it simply because he drew everything from a first person perspective, was it because he had trouble drawing himself, or was it because he felt he did not belong in these drawings, because he felt he did not belong with the others?

And there was something else that caught her attention. The night before Hiccup had mentioned his best friend, but in all of these drawings she did not see anybody whom she could imagine would be that person. It felt odd that Hiccup would not draw his best friend, of all people. And it still did not make sense. Hiccup had said his best friend was dead as well, but she knew of nobody who had died at the same time as he had, unless his best friend had gone on the failed expedition to find the Dragon's nest. But even that made no sense, because the only adult she would ever consider Hiccup's friend was Gobber, and Gobber was still very much alive.

She sighed in frustration and realized how sad this was. Here she was trying to figure out who Hiccup's best friend had been and kept drawing a blank. Whoever this person was, Hiccup had managed to keep it a secret from her, and possibly everyone. What on earth would have prompted a boy to keep such a thing to himself?

She pulled opened a drawer and felt she was on the right track at last, for she found a journal. The pages looked old and worn but it was all she could find so she would have to be satisfied for now.

As she picked it up she hesitated. Was this really the right thing to do? What if Hiccup found out that she was doing this? Never mind Hiccup, what if Gobber or the Chief found her? She would have to explain herself, and what answer could she give them? She looked around tensely and listened intently in case anyone was approaching. She suddenly had the sense that, right or wrong, this was not the place to search through one of Hiccup's journals. As carefully as she could she concealed the journal about her person and made her way to doorway. After making certain that Gobber was not looking in her direction, she slipped out of the forge and did not stop walking until she was back in her own room. Even then she kept an ear cocked for any odd sound and an eye focused on her closed door, and a part of her mind was racing to come up with a credible explanation for her behavior if she was disturbed.

Above all she dreaded the thought of Hiccup finding out about this. Perhaps it was because, as he had suggested the night before, she did not know what he was truly capable of or what could restrain him. There was also the possibility that, for all she knew, he was watching her at that very moment. The knowledge that he could conceal himself anywhere and at any time kept her alert and on the edge. The slightest sound and slightest movement was enough to make her pause and look about her, fully expecting to feel that unseen hand grip her throat again. She shuddered and felt a fear such as she had not felt since she was a child. He had said ghosts could not kill, but there was a lot that could be done to a body before the life it held was extinguished. And had he even been telling the truth about that?

With these dark thoughts running in her head she slowly opened the journal and started skimming through it. Much of it contained more sketches of people, objects, and weapons, but no dragons, she observed, except for one of a Monstrous Nightmare blasting a sheet of flame upon a house.

She flipped through the pages and at last found some genuine writing, not mere identification markers.

Some of the pages looked like attempts at poetry, so she looked through a handful.

"Sitting on my bed

Gazing out my window

The frame looks like prison bars

.

I do this a lot

Keeping out of the way

Watching blue skies change to stars

.

Thoughts run through my head

Hearing taunts from others

People with a hundred friends

.

And what have I got?

Just a fogged up window

Is this how happiness ends?"

Disconsolate and a bit disturbed, she moved on to another one, hoping it would be more cheerful. She did not get her wish, because the next one read:

"I can't do this anymore

And there's no point in pretending

There can't be an encore

The curtain is done descending

What's the point in going on?

We all know it is past

Everything that I once had is gone

Good things just never last

There's nothing to be gained now

No satisfaction to extract

We can't go on somehow

It's over and that is a fact

There's nothing left to do but say goodbye

Which is a thing I deplore

Go on and scream, throw a tantrum, and cry

I can't do this anymore"

She had to wonder if this was what Hiccup had really meant or if he was just writing. She could not imagine that all writers wrote from personal experience all the time. But if this was from personal experience, what did it mean? Was he talking about his life or something else? Maybe he was talking about fighting dragons or his blacksmithing skills. She scanned the page but did not find a date, so for all she knew this could have been written a month ago or five years ago. Given the pages felt a little crumpled and that the journal was used up, she guessed this was not the one he had been using immediately before he died. That one had probably been on his person when he had been taken. Still, this deduction did not help her narrow down when these poems might have been written.

She moved on and found a poem next to a large heap of writing. With difficulty, for the writing was smudged and hard to make out, she read:

"People pass by

Never caring

Never once sharing a little comfort or a friendly smile

Shouting at me with disgust and with spite

I don't know why

What have I done

To make ev'ry one hate me so much and treat me with such bile?

How can any of this be fair or right?

Much as I try

To be like them

They always condemn me and they scorn whatever I'm doing too

I often cry myself to sleep at night

If I should die

They would celebrate

If this is my fate, dying may be the only thing left to do

It might be the one way out of this plight

And she read this:

"I can't take this anymore. I can't. I could stand the teasing and the beatings and being ignored if I knew someone was looking out for me, but nobody is. Snotlout and the Twins tied me up a tree again, and my dad, when he finally found me the next morning, just said 'you've just gotta learn to be tough.' 'Gotta learn to be _tough'_? How am I supposed to be tough when it's three to one and they've thrown a bag over my head? I almost told him that but decided there was no point. He wouldn't listen. He never listens.

"I thought maybe if I was friends with Astrid they'd leave me alone, because they respect her, but she won't even look at me. I remember Snotlout once pushed me in a mud puddle, and nobody helped me up, even though she was standing nearby and saw everything. Of course, if I was friends with her, Snotlout would probably assume I was trying to steal her away from him and would increase the bullying.

"If I was friends with her…I'm realizing now that's another hopeless dream, as futile as my attempts to not stammer when she's around. She avoids me as if I'm diseased. So does everyone else, for that matter. Except for when they want to torment on me. Just this afternoon Mildew was talking about how weak children aren't worth keeping, and that it was good that my mother was gone so she can't be disappointed about me, like my father is. Gods, is this what every Vikings is like?

"And Fishlegs is just as evasive. I can't quite blame him because I know they'd target him if he showed me sympathy, but still…couldn't we stand and suffer together?

"Or maybe they're all right and Berk's better off without me. Maybe the entire world's better off without me. I'll bet if I die tonight nobody would notice.

"Useless, unwanted, helpless…

"What's the point? Couldn't I run away? Who cares what I do? What's it matter?"

And on the following page she read, scribbled all over the page:

"I want to die, just let me die,"

She shut the journal quickly. She could not bring herself to read any more.

Later that day Astrid went for a walk to try and clear her head of all the depressing thoughts that had been filling it ever since reading Hiccup's journal. Just reading about another person's misery had put her into a miserable mood, and she hoped that a walk and some exercise would cure her of it. It did not, because as she worked out she kept imagining Hiccup trying and failing to do the same exercises, like he used to.

She had kept an eye out, expecting to see Hiccup's ghost or some sign of it, but nothing happened during this time. She was almost starting to wonder if he had gone to another island when the tide was right. After what she had read, she would not have blamed it—him—for doing so.

She walked through the woods back to the village with her head down, and in doing so nearly walked into Tuffnut Thorsten.

"Whoa, Astrid, watch it!"

"Sorry, Tuff,"

"What's up with you? You look a little under the weather. Sick?"

"No just…Tuffnut, you know how Hiccup died, right?"

"Um…a dragon killed him, didn't it? Or is this a trick question?"

"It's not but…do you think there's a chance he might have _let_ the dragon kill him?"

"You mean like a…suicide?" he asked, looking thoughtful.

"That's exactly what I mean."

Tuffnut shrugged. "It's possible, though I can't imagine why he'd do that."

Astrid raised her eyebrows. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing." She could have accused Tuffnut of never being very sensitive or perceptive of Hiccup's feelings, but she knew Tuffnut could easily accuse her of the exact same thing. The two silently gazed at each other for a few moments.

"While we're on the subject of him, do you know who his best friend was?"

Tuffnut had to think about this for a moment. Hiccup's personal relationships were not something he was overly familiar with. "I'd assume it was Fishlegs or Gobber,"

"I'd say the same, but…" her voice trailed off. It was so frustrating, trying to figure out the ghost's riddle.

"But what?"

"Nothing,"

"Are you sure you're alright, Astrid?"

"I'm fine I'm just…trying to make sense of everything."

"You were never this interested in Hiccup while he was alive…" Tuffnut remarked.

"Nobody was." Astrid said bitterly. And to be honest, she thought Tuffnut looked very interested as well, though his tone implied careless indifference.

"So you think Hiccup's death was a suicide, do you?"

"I've heard a few things to suggest it," Astrid said carefully.

"Is this a secret? Am I forbidden to tell anyone?"

"No, it's not a _secret_ , but…well, just be careful when the Chief is around."

"Oh don't worry," Tuffnut laughed. He left Astrid's side and went deeper into the woods to find his absent sister. "Hey Ruff! Guess what I just learned about Useless!"

With Mead Hall declared 'safe' again, the Berkians gathered in it for dinner that night. Stoick especially was eager to demonstrate that there was nothing to worry about. There had been no disturbances that day, and he had already made up his mind that whatever had caused them was over. His conclusion was Loki was messing around with them simply for the fun of it, trying to drive them into a mad frenzy over nothing, and most people were quite satisfied with the answer. So before eating, when they gave thanks to the Gods, Stoick made sure to compliment Loki on his little joke and to thank him for not drawing it out any further.

Astrid kept looking at the fire, expecting to see the face appear again. She checked every few minutes it seemed and each time she was disappointed.

Her odd behavior did not go unnoticed, and her mother especially was concerned about it. "Astrid, stop that,"

"I'm just looking at the fire!"

"Why?"

"Well, I like seeing the shapes the flames make," she said. It was a half baked excuse and it made her mother frown.

"Astrid, you've never cared about that kind of thing before. Are you feeling alright?"

She wanted to say 'no, because I've met the ghost of a troubled boy I knew and ignored, I can't understand how he became a ghost, and I keep expecting him to appear at any moment,' but she knew fully how her mother, and everyone else for that matter, would react to such a statement, so she simply said "I'm fine,"

"Well stop looking at the fire and eat your food." She turned to her husband and said softly, "Perhaps we should ask Gothi to have a look at her,"

"I was just thinking of that,"

Astrid heard them and forced herself to stop looking at the fireplace. If this kept up, people would start to get suspicious. They might start to question everything she did, and might even declare her crazy. That would mean ruin for her and her family. The best Viking of her generation mad, it would be scandalous! Even if she was not proven so, it would still be a stain she would carry forever.

She wondered if this was Hiccup's revenge. Was he intentionally trying to occupy her thoughts so much that she was considered crazy? She shook her head and stared at her plate of bread and fish, trying very hard not to think about Hiccup at all. And why should she? He was dead and his ghost had only appeared once. There was no reason to expect anything more. So she kept trying to reassure herself.

Unfortunately, she could not get him out of her mind because others near her were talking about him. The comment Tuffnut had made about Astrid never being interested in Hiccup until after he was dead was applicable to many others in the village. Evidently Astrid's suggestion about Hiccup's death being a suicide had been spread throughout the village and people were discussing the likelihood of it.

"No Viking commits suicide,"

"Hiccup wasn't exactly a Viking,"

"Well he was about to be!"

"I don't believe it."

"I can."

"Nah, I still say it's more likely a dragon just killed him. There was nothing psychological or dramatic about it."

"Nothing dramatic? A dragon killed him!"

"So?"

"Hah! Good point!"

Snotlout was talking with the Thorsten Twins. "I can't see why he'd kill himself," Tuffnut said, "he was the star of Dragon Training! He had everything!"

"But did he see it that way?" Ruffnut asked.

"Why wouldn't he?" Snotlout asked.

"Maybe he only gave up the fight when he realized it was a Night Fury," Tuffnut shrewdly suggested, "I mean, everyone knows nobody's ever survived a Night Fury attack. Once he realized it was a Night Fury, he might have resigned himself to the inevitable and let it finish him,"

"He'd have resigned himself to the inevitable if it had been a Terrible Terror!" Snotlout laughed.

"What was that?" Stoick asked sharply. "What did you say, Snotlout?"

Snotlout had to fight to not panic and say something foolish. "Oh…well, sir, we were just talking about Hiccup's death, because someone suggested it might have been intentional, sir,"

"Do you mean to say my son let a dragon kill him?" Stoick exclaimed, "Why on earth would he do that? Who told you? Where did you hear this from?"

"It's just something I heard, sir," Snotlout said sheepishly, "Everyone's been talking about it,"

Stoick looked around angrily at his villagers. "Oh everyone's been talking about it, have they? Then why am I the last one to hear about it?" Nobody dared answer him. "Who first suggested it?" Silence still endured. "All right then, if that's the way it's going to be, I'll make this clear to all of you. Hiccup did not kill himself and no son of mine would have let a dragon kill him. This rumor is nothing more and I want people to stop talking about it!"

Someone, sitting where Stoick could not see her, said "But Chief, what if—"

"Gobber, wasn't Hiccup getting to be a skilled Dragon Killer during training?"

"Well, he never actually killed anything—"

"That's because he wasn't supposed to then. The point is, he was a finally becoming a fighter at the time of his death, and everyone knows that fighters do not allow themselves to lose when their opponent is a dragon! He was killed by the dragon he was fighting, end of story!"

"But Chief, didn't you say that there was no sign of a struggle?" Fishlegs asked nervously.

"That just shows that the dragon didn't have the guts to fight fairly. It snuck up from behind like the coward dragons are and attacked him when his back was turned."

"I don't know," Snotlout muttered, loudly enough for those around him to hear, "I wouldn't be surprised if Useless couldn't take the pressure of being a Viking and let the dragon eat him."

"I agree," Tuffnut said.

"It's certainly possible," Ruffnut added. "But does it really matter? Either way, a stupid dragon killed him—"

A sound like a great clap of thunder boomed through the hall and the walls trembled. Everyone jumped with fright. All the torches and fires went out, plunging them into darkness.

Over the screams, an angry cry was heard. Nobody knew where it was coming from, for it filled the room like the very air, and it was such a furious voice that nobody recognized it. "THAT ISN'T TRUE AND AT LEAST ONE PERSON IN HERE KNOWS IT ISN'T! SO YOU THINK THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE BUILDING, DO YOU? THEN HERE, LET ME GIVE YOU WHAT YOU WANT!"

They heard the sound of wood splitting loudly and everyone looked up at the ceiling. The beams holding the roof up were breaking apart. People screamed and ran for the doors. The voice laughed hysterically as the roof caved in and the beams and tiles plunged into the building they had sheltered for so long.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

To say that Berk was on high alert would have been a major understatement. Not even a dragon raid could have stirred such commotion among the inhabitants. With a dragon raid at least the population knew what to do: grab the nearest weapon and find every conceivable way to kill or drive away the attackers. But with this, nobody had any notion of what had truly happened; let alone what was to be done.

Some blamed the carpenters and they in turn blamed each other, some blamed Loki, some blamed the Twins, who also put the responsibility on Loki but praised him instead of blamed him, and then there were those who had no idea of whom to blame or if there even was anybody to blame.

Stoick tried to calm his people down and find out the truth of what had happened, but the fact was he felt just as lost and confused as they did. He wanted Gothi to commune with the Gods for answers again, but she was too busy attending to the injured. Thankfully nobody had been killed by the collapsing roof, but there were a few injuries nonetheless, mostly from the mad scramble for the exit rather than from the collapse itself. There were a few broken arms, some head injuries, and a number of cuts that were not threatening but still needed treating. More problematic were the mental injuries rather than the physical. With all the strange knockings and now this, it was truly starting to get out of hand and members of the tribe were becoming hysterical. And while Stoick did his best to bring them under control and get them to stop screaming and laughing and sobbing at the same time, he had moments where he was half inclined to join them.

Mead Hall itself was a wreck. The whole roof was gone and the interior was a disaster.

"And the coming winter won't help repairs," Gobber told Stoick bitterly.

"We'll get it rebuilt," Stoick said determinedly, as though convinced fixing this would solve everything. "We always do,"

Astrid came hurrying over to them, followed by her very perplexed parents, "Chief, I need to talk to you—"

"Not now," he said firmly, "We've got work to do."

"But I think I know what's going on here! I think I know what caused this!" She looked around anxiously.

Stoick felt his heart skip a beat but he fought to stay calm, telling himself that she might be saying this just to get his attention. "All right then. What caused it?"

"Please just hear me out…I think it was Hiccup's ghost."

The adults stared at her.

"I don't have time for bad jokes," Stoick growled as he turned away.

"Chief wait—"

"I said I don't have the time!"

"But I—Hiccup! Show yourself!" Astrid shouted to the night sky.

"Astrid, what are you doing?" Her mother cried.

"Hiccup, come on, show yourself! Take the credit for scaring us senseless!"

"Stop that," Stoick ordered. "Hofferson, get your daughter under control or I'll do it for you."

"I'm sorry Chief I don't know what's gotten into her!"

"Hiccup? Chief, I swear, his ghost visited me last night! He told me all kinds of things—"

"That's enough," Stoick said.

"Chief, I swear I'm not crazy—he's the one who's been causing all the disturbances! He's been knocking on the buildings, moving things around, he's the—I saw his face in the fireplace yesterday!"

"Chief, I am so sorry. I think she's just over reacting to the accident—"

"I'm not crazy and I'm not overacting!"

"That's enough!" Stoick shouted. He grabbed Astrid by the shoulders and yelled in her face, "How dare you insult my dead son! How dare you suggest that he's a ghost plaguing our village! I don't know what's going on here, but I'm starting to think it might be you who's responsible!"

Astrid broke away desperately. "Hiccup, come on, toughen up and take the responsibility for your actions!"

"Why?"

That single word changed everything. Every Viking froze dead in their tracks and looked around, mouths and eyes wide opened.

"Well don't look as if I just told you I was really a woman!" the disembodied voice laughed. There could be no doubt in anybody now. Only one person in the entire world sounded like that, and that person was Hiccup. "So now you know Astrid isn't crazy—but it was sure funny watching her trying to convince you she isn't! HA!" the voice had sounded like Hiccup's alright, but the laughter was strange to every ear. Few people had ever heard Hiccup laugh for real, and now he was laughing almost as hysterically as several Vikings had only moments ago.

Stoick looked around wildly but saw no signs of his boy. "Hiccup?"

"Hello, Dad. I'll bet you never imagined you'd be hearing this voice again, did you? Is it music to your ears? And look! Would you call this a sight for sore eyes or an eyesore?"

Nobody could believe what they were seeing but they had to. Something which had the form of Hiccup was gradually materializing on a nearby rooftop. But while it looked like Hiccup, the thing was silvery gray and transparent. To look upon it was like looking through an opaque window at the objects behind it. The eyes, once forest green, were gray and blazing like the sun through the smoky haze of a forest fire.

"I knew it," Fishlegs whispered.

"Son? Is that really you?"

"I could say 'in the flesh', but I don't have any anymore, so how about in the spirit? Or whatever you call this form. And yes, I just gestured to all of me. I wonder how many references to past phrases I'll be making tonight." The specter said with mock puzzlement.

Stoick felt his throat tighten, "Then…it's true? You're a—"

"Yes I am—all thanks to someone on this island!" Hiccup suddenly screamed, clenching his fist against his head.

"Who?" Stoick cried, "Who did this to you?"

"I don't know yet—but I'm narrowing down the suspect list! I've got time on my side now, and sooner or later I'll find them! Hahaha, I'll bet you're going to have some sleepless nights now, aren't you? See how fun it is staying up all night?"

How was anybody to react when a ghost appeared before them? Everyone was trembling with fear, but Hiccup's hints and riddles riveted them to the ground. With few exceptions they were all terrified to speak, afraid to miss a word the ghost was saying and afraid they might say something in turn that infuriated it. It was fear of the unknown that kept them so still and so quiet.

Except for Stoick, but being the Chief he was used to taking the lead in potentially dangerous situations. "But how is this possible? You were—"

"Buried improperly. That's what happens when there isn't a body."

Stoick looked at Gothi accusingly. "I thought you said the burial we gave him would be sufficient!"

She shrugged unhelpfully.

"Obviously it wasn't," Hiccup said dryly. A few Vikings, including Gobber, felt compelled to nod in agreement with this logic.

Stoick snapped his fingers. "Don't worry, son, we'll find your body and give you a proper burial this time and then you'll—" he suddenly realized what he was saying.

"Ah, yes, you'd like that, wouldn't you? You like the idea of me moving on and you lot never having to see me again. And then I won't be around to cause you any more trouble and you can live happy Viking lives of bullheaded violence and beat up the next runt that comes along. Well I hate to disappoint you—but I'm sure you're used to it by now, you did call me 'the Village Disappointment' after all—but I doubt you'll ever find my body."

"Why? Where is it?" Stoick asked desperately.

"At the bottom of the ocean."

The ghost vanished from the roof and appeared standing right in front of his father. Now Stoick could make out the details better. The right side of Hiccup's chest was misshaped, as if the rib cage on that side had shrunk and moved over, and the right side of his face looked flatter than it used to. On top of that, from his hair to his clothes, Hiccup looked drenched, as if he had just climbed out of the sea. "Here's what happens when you drown after getting hit by a boulder shot from a catapult. I wouldn't advise trying it."

"But you—you were killed by a dragon!"

"No I wasn't."

The crowd gasped.

Stoick was very confused now, and he was hardly the only one. "You weren't? But then—?"

"You're going to give yourself a headache if you keep this up. That's one nice thing about being dead, you know. Aside from feeling ill around water at certain times, I never have to worry about a sickness. Oh, just look at you, staring at me as you try to figure things out. Are you trying to melt a glacier by staring at it or something?"

"Son, I—"

"Sorry about the roof, by the way, but just like you said, you can always rebuild. And I didn't appreciate your insults, by the way!" he added sharply to the rest of the crowd. "Didn't any of you notice that most of the noises and 'disturbances' happened when you made fun of me or my best friend?"

"I did!" Fishlegs exclaimed excitedly, before he remembered exactly what he was talking to.

"What best friend?" Snotlout suddenly exclaimed. "You don't have any friends!"

"AND THANKS TO SOMEONE HERE, THAT'S ACTUALLY TRUE!" Hiccup yelled, "DEAD—GONE—AND SOMEONE HERE IS TO BLAME FOR IT! And as for the rest of you—" he looked about at the crowd, his gray eyes filled with fury. It was enough to make the stoutest quail. "What was I known as? The Village Disappointment? The Fishbone? Hiccup the Useless? The Runt? The mistake? The Village Screw Up? So you guys want me to screw up your village, do you? All right then, we'll have some fun at someone _else's_ expense for a change!"

The ghost vanished. There was a moment of agonizing silence, and then Snotlout was knocked over.

"How do you like being pushed to the ground all the time? How does the dirt taste?" the unseen Hiccup cackled.

Snotlout spat out dirt and mud but was pushed to the ground again.

"I never said you could get up, _Useless_!" Hiccup laughed. He sounded downright insane now. He kicked Snotlout again and the boy began squealing and pleading for mercy.

Suddenly a large helmet was pulled off one Viking, revealing him to be bald. He gasped and tried to cover his head while Hiccup laughed loudly. "Appearances can be embarrassing, can't they?" He flung the helmet at a house.

"Hiccup, stop it!" Gobber shouted.

"Why? Aside from me, who said those words when I was the one being bullied? Hey, Ruffnut, wanna be the second Viking to ever fly?"

Unseen hands grabbed Ruffnut by her vest and lifted the screaming girl into the air. People in the crowd screamed too. "Enjoying the sensation? Surely someone as nuts as you must _love_ what it does to your stomach!"

"Put me down, put me down! Help, help, help!"

A few people tried to grab Ruffnut's legs but Hiccup pulled her higher. "Scream all you want, but nobody's coming to save you! You said that to me quite a few times, remember?" the voice thundered in her ears, "I can see why you guys liked to gang up on me so much—there's something stimulating about being in control and having someone else at your mercy."

"Hiccup, I'm sorry! Please!"

"Oh, you think saying you're _sorry_ will make everything better?"

Since pleading had failed she went for threats and insults, which had always worked on Hiccup before. "You stupid little piece of rat dung, let me go!"

"Bad choice of words."

The unseen hands released her and she fell to the ground. As soon as she landed she grabbed her foot and ground her teeth. "Argh, you've broken it!"

"Oh come on. It's just sprained at worst, you'll be fine." The ghost said dismissively, "maybe it'll give you a scar. Isn't getting a scar so much fun? We all love pain, don't we? Yeah, don't we all love getting hurt and having limbs hacked off—?"

They heard the sudden and loud sound of shattered glass. A Viking cried "My window!" but the cry was overpowered by Hiccup screaming in agony "TOOTHLESS!" It sounded like he was weeping. "TOOTHLESS!"

"Hiccup, who's toothless?" Astrid yelled.

" _You_ will be if you turn out to be the one who killed him!" Hiccup bellowed. For a moment Astrid felt the grip on her throat again, but it was released almost instantly. More windows were smashed. A broom was lifted off the ground and thrown wildly at a door. Some barrels were knocked over. Torches were extinguished. A wagon lost a wheel. And several people were pinched and had their helmets knocked off and kicked around.

The terrified villagers rushed around trying to restore order, but they no sooner had one thing fixed than something else was disturbed. How were they supposed to stop someone they could not see? The mayhem was completely random. Nobody knew what Hiccup would do next.

Stoick cried out, desperately trying to reason with his son, "Hiccup, this won't help you, this won't help any of us—

"Who said I was trying to help us?" the ghost shouted. A door was literally pulled from its hinges and thrown to the ground.

"Son, we can fix this, we'll find a way and we'll think of something, just—please, tell me what happened to you!"

"Don't you want me to 'toughen up'?" Yet despite the damage he was doing he seemed to be avoiding the humans now. The pinches and shoving had stopped and the objects being damaged were getting further and further away from the crowds. Hiccup's cries, of which there were plenty, also sounded much less malicious and more desperate and pitiful.

"What am I doing—Toothless, why? Why? Let me die, let me go, I want to go home, make it stop, Bud, make it stop! Leave me alone!"

"Hiccup!" Gobber called gently, "C'mon, lad, let's talk about this!"

"Son—!"

"Leave me alone!" the boy screamed, "You never had trouble doing that when I was alive, why should it be a problem now that I'm dead? LEAVE ME ALONE!"

With that shriek the rampage suddenly stopped. Silence returned; unhealthy and oppressive silence; thick and heavy as a Viking's dreadlocks with tension. Nobody knew what was going to happen next. Hiccup might reappear at any moment and smash something or throw someone to the ground again, or he might not. The Berkians looked around tensely, waiting for something to happen. They could feel the anxiety in their bodies. Their intestines coiled up like snakes from the stress of waiting, which was by far worse than anything actually happening.

Bit by bit people began to pick up broken fragments of glass, or put objects back where they belonged. Such acts were about the only distraction from the anticipation of the next rampage. Although it was well into the night, nobody had the slightest notion of going to sleep now. Even if anyone had gone to bed they would never have fallen asleep before daybreak, so keyed up were they.

In very low whispers they talked about what had just happened. Nobody dared speak too loudly in case Hiccup overheard them, because most of what was said was hardly positive or sympathetic.

"I never thought he had it in him to do something like this,"

"He's as destructive as he ever was,"

"Hiccup as a ghost—what an idea,"

"What's gonna happen now? What's he gonna do to us next?"

"Even in death he plagues us,"

"It'll be alright, he'll tire of it sooner or later. He can't be any worse than those dragons, after all,"

"I wonder what he meant by 'toothless'?"

Astrid was among those cleaning up. Stoick carefully approached her. He was hesitant to speak at first, for a Chief such as he was not in the habit of apologizing. At length, as he helped her dumb some broken glass into a barrel, he said "Lass, look…you say you met…well, _Hiccup_ before? After his death, I mean?"

"Yes I did, Chief,"

"Then I want to know everything he said to you. I want to get to the bottom of this. I want to know who this 'toothless' person is, I want to know how he really died if it wasn't a dragon, and I want to know what we can do about it."

"I'll help you all I can Chief, but…I don't know a whole lot about it. He wouldn't say much except in hints." Astrid said forlornly.

"Wouldn't or didn't?"

"Both, I think. About all I can conclude from tonight is that he didn't die by suicide." Given how Hiccup had spoken and reacted, it seemed safe to rule that possibility.

Stoick frowned. "But if it wasn't suicide and it wasn't a dragon…that really only leaves accident or murder!"

Astrid nodded tensely.

"We'll talk later," he told her. "And I'm…I'm sorry for dismissing you earlier,"

"I'm not sure I would have believed it either, Chief,"

He grunted for a response and walked away trying to make sense of everything. If Hiccup had been killed by accident—but how could he have been killed by accident without someone else being involved? Hiccup had hinted that he had been hit by a catapult boulder and drowned. That made no sense! How on earth could he have been hit by such a missile, even if it had been done intentionally?

But what if a boulder had rolled downhill right into Hiccup? And from there it rolled him over a cliff into the sea? But that still did not explain who this 'toothless' was, nor did it explain if the boulder had started rolling thanks to human involvement. He almost wanted Hiccup to reappear so he could ask, but on sober second thought he knew that was a bad idea. Besides, had not Hiccup said himself he did not know who had caused his death?

But Stoick could not merely rely on a ghost to investigate a person's death. He was bound as Chief to solve this riddle himself.

Gobber joined him. The crippled blacksmith was at a loss for words initially. "Well…this is sure a mess, ain't it?"

"Yes," Stoick said nonchalantly.

"Whatcha gonna do about it?"

"Find out how it happened,"

Gobber looked at him expectantly. "And?"

Stoick looked confused. "What?"

"Well you just found out yer son is a ghost!"

"I know that, Gobber,"

"Stoick, doncha think you might take _advantage_ of this opportunity?" Gobber hinted.

"And do what? What opportunity?"

"Maybe the chance to mend some bridges between the two of you?"

Stoick looked at his friend first in surprise. In truth, he had been more interested in finding out what had happened than what could happen later. His surprise turned to sorrow. "I don't know, Gobber. You saw what happened tonight. Do you seriously think Hiccup wants to mend _anything_ now?"

"Maybe not now, but in a little while, once he's calmed down a bit…"

Stoick snorted. "I highly doubt that'll happen any time soon,"

"Why?"

"Well…because I doubt that'll happen! Isn't that reason enough?"

"Stoick, your son is a ghost. I can't imagine what he's going through right now…don't you think maybe his father should try to help him through a time like this?"

"And how am I supposed to do that?" Stoick asked.

Gobber looked at the ground.

"Well? How?"

"I don't know," Gobber said bitterly.

"Gobber, that thing…that boy…whatever he is he made it very clear tonight he doesn't want to talk. If he wanted to talk, why didn't he just tell me what was going on, instead of hinting about it?"

"Maybe he doesn't know what to say either?"

"Maybe. Or maybe he's hiding something from us," Stoick said darkly. "Either way, I highly doubt he's going to talk to me about it. He's never been one for that kind of thing,"

Snotlout stormed around, so angry that he hindered efforts to clean up rather than aided them. "Can you believe the nerve of that guy? He practically beat me up!"

"Not hard enough for the lesson to sink in, it seems," Fishlegs muttered sadly.

"What was that?"

"Nothing," Fishlegs was not in the mood for a confrontation now. He watched Tuffnut dragging his sister away. He thought Ruffnut looked rather ill, probably from the scare she had gotten.

"Say Fishy, how'd you know it was Hiccup the whole time?" Snotlout suddenly asked.

Fishlegs spent a moment collecting his thoughts. "Well, like he said, I noticed the loudest disturbances occurred whenever Hiccup was brought up. And the only thing that could explain what was going on was a ghost."

"Hmph. Clever, I suppose. I knew it was him the whole time, of course, but I didn't want to let people know. You saw what happened when Astrid brought it up—everyone thought she was crazy. I was smart enough to avoid that mistake."

Fishlegs was disgusted and made an excuse about leaving to help someone fix their window, but Snotlout grabbed him.

"You don't think Hiccup's going to come back, do you? He's not going to attack us any further, right?" he tried to look casual but his eyes told stories of terror.

"Snotlout, I have no idea."

"Not that I'm worried, of course. If he ever shows his face here again, I'll beat him to a pulp, just like I always do—did—do—whatever, just like always!"

Fishlegs looked around nervously, expecting something horrible to happen to Snotlout now, but nothing went wrong. Either Hiccup was in a forgiving mood or not within earshot. "I wonder where he went,"

High up on one of the hills around Berk's coast, the ghost of Hiccup looked around. Hills such as this one were ideal for the defense of the island, and as a result there were catapults and watchtowers on most of them.

"Let's see—we were right over there when it happened," Hiccup said, focusing on the scene from his memory, "so this has to have been the catapult. So if we figure out how many people were on Berk at that moment, and work out where each person was—I'll find out who did it. I'll find out who killed us, Bud. There can't be too many suspects. Most of the tribe was just returning, so that leaves only those who did not go on that expedition." He looked at the catapult with cold fury. So this was the machine that had killed them. How many other lives had this inanimate contraption taken?

"And to think, I once designed and built such things," he scowled. He felt his anger built up again and with a loud shout he began dismantling it. "No more lives are going to be lost because of this! I'll throw these cursed pieces into the sea, where they can mingle with the bodies they've put there!"

As an orange and aged sun rose into the hazy air over a still weary world that had not been refreshed by the night, Berk's defenses were less than they had been the day before. As if to compensate for the loss, of which the Berkians still knew nothing, they were much, much more alert than they had been the day before. It was unlikely that nowhere else in the world did the sun rise over an island filled with more anxiety or suffering from such a strain of uncertainty as Berk now felt.


	6. Chapter 6

**To my guest reviewer: certainly you are allowed to be curious, and I apologize for the bluntness of my earlier response. But the way your previous review was written implied to me that you were saying I ought** _ **not**_ **to be writing a story like this. Being in a snappish mood that day due to job difficulties and recurring back pains, I was harsher in my response than I intended to be. I'm sorry.**

 **Chapter 6**

To everyone's surprise, there was relative quiet and calm over Berk for the following nine days. Initially it was assumed to be the lull before the coming storm, but as the days went by and nothing out of the ordinary happened, people began to assume that Berk was back to normal. The Twins were up to their usual attempts to destroy things, especially the Chief's house, Fishlegs went back to his studies, and Snotlout went after Astrid, who spent most of her time in the woods avoiding him, exercising, and keeping an eye out for Hiccup. He had not been seen on Berk for days, and many dared to hope in private that he was gone for good. They deceived themselves.

They tried to forget about Hiccup as they had before learning he was a ghost. This was helped by a 'no-talking rule' which enforced itself because everyone was fearful of saying something that might unwittingly offend the ghost. They tried to forget about the tormented specter that was haunting Berk, as if hoping that such forgetfulness would mean nothing bad was happening, like a family dwelling near a volcano with the hope and belief that it would not erupt in their lifetime.

Yet any sensible person in such a dwelling knows there is always the chance the volcano will stir to life again. Still, people believe what they wish and reassure themselves that the worst will never happen to them.

Now most believed Hiccup had not been present since that fateful night. This was not entirely true. He appeared once, several days after, but only to one person.

Gobber had been busily working at the forge, as usual. A blacksmith's job was never over. There were weapons to sharpen and repair, new ones to build, each one incredibly time consuming, and then there were other goods that needed to be crafted, like nails. Nails were especially going to be needed to rebuild Mead Hall's roof. This and all the other many demands were enough to tax the most physically fit of blacksmiths, and that person was certainly not Gobber.

Hobbling about on his peg-leg, he grabbed a pair of tongs with his good hand, picked up a red hot chisel, than using his other arm, attached to which was a prosthetic with a hammer appendage, he pounded away at the metal to get it into shape and remove the impurities. Even though it was a cold day sweat was running down his face.

He dunked the chisel in a bucket of water. Steam hissed into the air. "Whew! All right, next one—oh, thanks, Hiccup," he said absentmindedly as another red hot chisel was placed on the anvil. Suddenly Gobber looked up and dropped everything. "HICCUP!"

"Careful or you'll set the building on fire!" the ghost shouted, quickly picking up the red metal. Gobber watched him in astonishment. "Oh sure, I can't feel the heat or cold and I don't have a physical being, so this doesn't harm me in the slightest. Here—want some help?"

"You know, I could sure use a ghost in here…" Gobber remarked thoughtfully, as he put the tongs around the metal. "You could work night and day without tiring, you wouldn't need to worry about burning yourself…"

"No thanks," Hiccup said. His expression went from amusement to sorrow. "No thanks,"

"So what exactly _are_ you going to do now?" Gobber asked uncertainly.

"I'm still trying to find out who killed me."

"It wasn't me, I swear!" Gobber said at once. "I would _never_ have done such a thing!"

"I know it wasn't. I know for a fact you were down at the docks greeting the ships when it happened."

Gobber breathed a sigh of relief. "That's good to know. But do you have any other leads?"

"That's one thing I came here to ask you about. Who went with you to the docks that day? Did anybody?"

Gobber thought a moment. "One or two did, mostly the dockhands. Oh, and Silent Sven was there."

"So that's another person off the list," Hiccup muttered, pacing about the stall. "Good. I didn't want it to be him. Do you know where any of the others were that day? Astrid, Snotlout, and the Twins, for instance?"

Gobber shook his head. "I think Astrid was in the woods—probably killing trees with that axe of hers. I can't speak for anyone else."

There was a very long silence as they refocused on the blacksmith work. It was difficult for both of them because blacksmithing was suddenly among the things they wanted to think about least.

"I just can't believe this," Gobber said at last. "I never thought things would turn out this way."

"That's how it goes. One by one the leaves fall off until the tree becomes a mere skeleton," Hiccup sighed. Once the last chisel was submerged he resumed his pacing. He became so absorbed in his thoughts that he walked right through the furnace without realizing it. Gobber's mouth fell opened and his fake tooth dropped out.

"I sometimes forget I can go through solid objects," he admitted after Gobber explained why he was staring at him like a fish. "I don't even need to walk, really, but it's such an old habit that I can't seem to shake it off. Maybe I should go have a talk with Fishlegs. We could write 'The Book of Ghosts' together!" he laughed morosely, "I can see the entries now: 'Extremely Dangerous, but you can't kill on sight because they're already dead. Just run, hide, and pray they never find you.' It'll be my legacy to Berk."

"Speaking of talking with people, have you talked with your father?" Gobber asked tentatively.

"Not since the night I scared Berk silly,"

"An' why not?"

"What would I say to him? And equally important, what could he say to me? He hardly even cares that I'm dead!"

"Of course he cares, Hiccup! How could you say such a thing?"

"Oh really? Then why doesn't he permit people to insult me when he's present? I was there, remember? When Snotlout said 'remember: Hiccup would've been a lot worse!' what did my father do? Nothing! He let them laugh, showed no sign of anger, and I dare say he even felt inclined to agree with him!"

Gobber swallowed. "I know you two haven't had an easy time—"

"To put it mildly,"

"—But he still cares for you! Hiccup, you know men like Stoick don't like showing their tender sides in public!"

"Tender side?" Hiccup snorted, "He doesn't have one. He's only ever cared about Berk, my mother, and the imaginary son he's always wanted to have; those and his reputation for being a tough Viking."

"His raw Vikingness?" Gobber asked lightly.

Hiccup shook his head. "Oh Gobber, there were consequences to that all right, in ways we couldn't have even dreamed of! That was the night that started everything."

Gobber frowned. "I thought you said you…died the day the ships returned?"

"I did."

"Then what does the night of our most recent raid have to do with anything?"

Hiccup looked at him strangely. "A simple series of decisions and actions that started that night led meanderingly to my demise."

"What?"

"I can trace the events that led to my death back to that night."

"Oh. But what happened?"

"I shot down a Night Fury."

Gobber smiled slightly. "Hiccup, I know you're really proud of what you think you did, but—"

"I'm not proud of it," Hiccup glumly interrupted. "Not anymore. And by your tone, I'm guessing you still don't believe I actually did it."

"Lad, it is kinda hard to believe that—"

"That a weak and pathetic fishbone could do what nobody else has ever done? That it's impossible to believe that where the perfect Vikings failed I succeeded? Is that what you're saying?" Hiccup said sharply, "That a boy can't possibly do something better than the adults?"

"Well…no, but you've gotta admit it's highly unlikely."

"And you think I lied about it to get attention?"

"Of course not. I'm sure you did hit something that night, but I don't believe it was a Night Fury. In the darkness, it could have been any kind of dragon."

"Well I did hit one." He suddenly put a hand over his face. "And I'm torn between being glad I did and wishing I hadn't!"

Gobber was still confused. "But how did shooting down a Night Fury lead to your death weeks later? Unless that Night Fury killed you? But you've said that you weren't killed by a dragon, so…c'mon, Hiccup, you've gotta help me out here! I can't make heads or tails of this! Can't you let me know the truth?"

"I think I've kept you from your work for too long," Hiccup said. He turned away and walked through the door. Gobber looked around expectantly for a few minutes, waiting for him to return. Eventually he accepted the reality that Hiccup was not returning, and he dejectedly resumed his blacksmithing.

Hiccup stood invisible outside. There had been rain that morning but it was clearing off now. The muddy ground was covered in orange pine needles and small golden leaves, slopped together in slimy collections with dark brown sticks and pine cones. The sun was out, poking feebly through the thin white clouds that were scattered across a sharp blue sky, but it provided little heat. Hiccup knew this because he could see the breath of those who unwittingly passed him. It may have been sunny, but it was still a chilly and crisp day. And he could not feel any of it.

He watched people passing by, going about their daily routines. He could hear children helping and hindering their parents or running around with friends. He could see the Twins sneaking away into the woods. Ruffnut looked so enthusiastic that she was almost dragging Tuffnut away. He saw some men applying red paint to the trimming of a house. He could hear Snotlout attempting to flirt with Astrid—for who else would he be flirting with?—and then heard a loud cry of pain that usually followed such attempts. And there was his father, directing the rebuilding of Mead Hall's roof. Stoick looked like he had no other care in the world other than his current project.

Hiccup wondered if he felt any guilt for collapsing the roof, and after a moment of thinking he decided he did not. He could not feel a thing about it, nor did he find anything wrong with his actions. He wondered if that was the right way to feel. Or did it even matter? Morality often was backed up by threats of the immoral and moral ones being punished or rewarded in death, respectively, but he was already dead. What more could they do to him? He had been moral on Berk, far more moral than others, and here was his reward for it.

He dismissed the thoughts when he saw a group of children running by. One of them actually walked right through him, though the girl had no idea. He wondered if he would reveal himself again. But if he did, villagers would probably either react by watching him suspiciously or by running away screaming. So he turned away and floated back to the lonely woods.

So Berk had experienced 9 days of quiet, but it could not last. Periods of quiet never do. One night Stoick, who had only recently gotten a decent night's sleep, was awoken by a sound he knew all too well: the village alarm bell. At once he leapt out of bed, threw on his boots while grabbing his axe, and ran outside to find Berk once again in the throes of a dragon raid.

It was sheer chaos outside. Several homes and defenses were already burning. Vikings were running in every direction, half trying to get something or someone to safety, the other half going for the nearest dragon. The great beasts themselves were spectacularly illuminated by the fires as they swooped overhead, carrying livestock in their claws. Stoick grabbed a set of bolas from another Viking and threw them at a Gronkle without any effort. The creature's wings got entangled and it fell to the ground with a loud thud. Stoick hardly noticed. For him it was just the routine.

"Right, what have we got this time?" he yelled once he met up with Spitelout Jorgenson.

"About the usual. Gronkles, Nadders, and Zipplebacks."

"Any Monstrous Nightmares?"

"None so far,"

"How about Night Furies?" It was such a habitual question that Spitelout already knew he was going to ask it and was already shaking his head. At that moment a burning tower collapsed behind him. While several people threw themselves to the ground to evade the falling wreckage, neither he nor Stoick reacted as if anything bad had happened.

"Right, get the livestock to the caves. The dragons will try to get them as they move and we'll take the pests down as they expose themselves!"

"Just so long as we don't lose anything for this!" Spitelout shouted over his shoulder as he ran off.

Stoick turned to another Viking. "Go and tell the new recruits they're allowed to fight dragons now."

"Are you sure, Chief? Aside from Astrid, I don't think anybody did too well,"

"Well nothing beats experience, right? Get going! This isn't the time to argue and we need every man we can get!"

Astrid's heart leapt for joy when she heard the news. "Yes! No more fire brigade duties!" She seized her axe and looked around wildly for the nearest dragon.

"And keep an eye out for Night Furies!" the Viking roared to no one in particular.

Astrid only took a few steps and then she heard a sound that she had almost never heard before during a dragon raid. It was the sound of someone laughing.

"Isn't fire such a lovely thing? 'When I'm dead, let fire consume the Earth.' Those Romans knew what they were about, didn't they? Shall I sing the _Sack of Ilium_?" She looked up and saw Hiccup sitting on one of the burning homes, looking completely relaxed as flames turned the wood around him to ashes. "I doubt you'll have to worry about Night Furies, by the way. It's very likely you'll never have to worry about them again!"

"How can you sit there laughing while your home is on fire?" Astrid angrily shouted.

"Berk was never my home," he said dismissively. "You guys always made sure I felt that way."

"Just listen to yourself! Don't you have a heart? Don't you care that people's lives are in danger?"

"No, Astrid, I don't have a heart anymore. I'm dead, remember?" he gestured to his chest. "And honestly, whose fault is it that lives are in danger? If you guys hate dragons so much, why don't you just settle somewhere else? Why didn't we do that a few centuries ago?"

"And just give up? Let it be known that we were driven out by a bunch of mindless beasts?" Her pride was stung by the mere thought of it.

"If your ego won't let you accept defeat, then whose fault is it if people's lives are in danger now? Who's lacking the heart now? I was forced to lose mine, but you lot seem to be deliberately giving yours up for the sake of your pride!"

"Don't you _dare_ lecture me! So you had a hard life, big deal! Look beyond yourself for once! You've got all kinds of abilities now you could use for the good of the village! And all you're thinking about is punishing the people who made your life a little tough. You're so selfish it's just pathetic!" she turned away and charged at a Nadder.

Hiccup appeared in front of her. "And you're the picture of humility, aren't you? The girl who destroyed trees because she was so angry about getting second place is actually a selfless martyr! All your life you've only been interested in benefiting yourself! Oh sure, you can hide behind the façade of 'it's for the good of the village', but the truth is you just wanted to do the village good so you could get the recognition. You wanted to know my tricks because you couldn't tolerate the idea of anyone doing better than you and you know it!"

"That's not true!" Astrid shouted. She cursed internally, for this distraction had allowed the Nadder to slip away. "And you just made me lose my prize!"

"You see there? 'My prize'! Not 'kill', not 'prey', not 'victim', you call it a 'prize'! Because that's all they are, aren't they? A glorious award for you to show off to everyone!"

"Well you thought that way too, remember? You wanted nothing better than to kill one!"

"Yes I did! I once thought if I killed just one dragon everything would perfect with my life. And you know what I've realized? One—it would never have happened! One error and all the glory is forgotten. Two—I realized that dragons aren't as horrible as we think they are, and that killing one wouldn't be glorious or praise worthy—it would be WRONG!" Astrid took a step back, so alarmed was she by the ferocity of his last word. "But what do you care? We're all selfish, really. We all want things to go our way. The only difference is motives. I just wanted to be accepted." He disappeared again.

Astrid did not have time to dwell on what he had said. There were still plenty of dragons to fend off and fires to put out. And to think she had almost gotten involved in a philosophical discussion in the middle of a dragon raid! She shook her head and rushed towards a burning house that screams were coming from.

As she reached the door she heard a woman screaming for her infant son. Without a second thought she forced her way through the burning door. Tongues of flames were licking the walls on all sides. She looked around but saw no one, so she tested the small staircase. The stairs held by some miracle, and she raced up them to the second floor.

She saw a small boy crawling on the floor, coughing and barely conscious. She carefully picked him up.

"Who's lacking the heart now, Hiccup?" she thought proudly.

But as she started making her way down the staircase part of the ceiling came down, narrowly missing her. It collapsed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. She had small hope of getting out that way now.

"All right, we'll try a window," she said quickly.

Outside, some distance away from Astrid's predicament, four Gronkles had been trapped under a net. They howled like mad dogs as Spitelout Jorgenson readied his axe to kill them. But he never landed a blow because a Nadder came running through the area. Between attacking a free dragon and four subdued ones he instinctively went with the former. And as he ran off, he did not notice the netting being undone by unseen hands.

"Oh no! The net is getting frayed! The dragons might escape! Whatever shall we do?" Hiccup mocked. "Go, guys. Get away from this place."

The Gronkles never knew what had happened, but the net had suddenly been broken through, so they were not about to complain as they flew away.

Hiccup watched them go wistfully. Some shouting caught his attention. Thinking another dragon had been caught he followed his ears, only to discover it was really Astrid trying to drop a boy from the window of a burning house. Everyone nearby had their arms raised, ready to catch the boy if she tossed him, but nobody seemed near enough. Nobody dared get any closer to the flames that were rapidly destroying the house.

Hiccup sighed and disappeared.

From the window, holding the boy as if he was an oversized doll, Astrid frantically looked for someone close enough to catch him. Nobody seemed close enough, but the house felt like it was on the verge of collapsing and those fires were not getting any closer to dying out. She would just have to take the risks and pray things went well. Then, without warning, something invisible grabbed her by the shirt collar and lifted her and the unconscious boy into the air.

"One of the nicer things about being a ghost," a voice said in her ear, "is that physical weight and strength mean nothing."

"Hiccup?" It was all she could initially get out.

"Who else?"

"Where are you taking us?" she cried wildly. "Put us down! What are you doing? Is this more revenge?"

" _Relax_ ," Hiccup said, "I'll put you down, don't worry. Just answer me something: when the ships returned, where were you?"

It took her a moment to realize what he meant. "I was in the woods. I was exercising and looking for you."

"Where?"

"Around Raven Point, I think. Yes, that's where you seemed to be hiding, so I was searching over there."

"Can you answer for anyone else?"

"Yes. Snotlout had been following me early that morning, for the usual reasons."

"I see…"

"Hiccup, I—"

"Sorry if you didn't get a scar." He said as he set them down. Astrid wanted to talk more but he seemed to be gone.

To the people below it looked as though Astrid was walking through the air on her own accord. As she slowly descended to the ground they gaped at her, except for the boy's mother, who in between sobs and prayers of gratitude grabbed him and worked to restore his breathing.

Only then did Stoick arrive on the scene, having been busy with other burning structures. The resounding cheers perplexed him. "What happened?"

"Hiccup and Astrid saved my son!" the woman cried, holding her boy as tightly as possible.

Stoick looked at Astrid in amazement. Her parents, who were joining the crowd, rushed to her side. Much as she would have dismissed it, being in the middle of a fire while saving someone had really done a number on her nervous system, and she was shaking and gasping for breath.

But there was no time for congratulations. A dragon raid was still going on and several more dragons had escaped somehow. Everyone who could quickly returned to the struggle. Bit by bit the dragons flew off, some with livestock, but most of them left empty handed. All of a sudden people looked around and realized there was nothing to fight anymore. The raids had a tendency to start and end that abruptly.

Yet even with the dragons gone there was still a huge amount of work to be done. Fires had to be extinguished, the wounded needed tending, and livestock needed organizing, among a host of other tasks.

For a people who loved violence, they absolutely hated this part. There was no entertainment in trying to help a man whose intestines were hanging out of his slit torso, or finding a woman who had been burned so badly she could not be identified, or trying to reassure a screaming and newly orphaned child that everything was going to be alright. At the back of everyone's minds was the fear of the livestock loss, for if it was too severe they faced starvation. And there was always the chance someone would go home only to discover everything they owned had been reduced to ashes.

Stoick, as he always was after a raid, was in a grim mood as he distributed tasks to his people.

"Chief, look!" someone cried, pointing at a fence which had been largely unharmed during the raid.

On the fence, in blood red letters, were these words:

'Snotlout and Tuffnut killed me'

Stoick dropped the hammer he was holding. Everyone flinched as they heard Hiccup's sarcastic laughter.


	7. Chapter 7

**Content Warning for this chapter! I hope it's nothing too strong, but this is probably the creepiest and most horrific chapter in the whole story.**

 **Chapter 7**

Snotlout and Tuffnut could not believe what had happened. Over the vigorous protests from them and their families, they had been dragged to Berk's prison and locked up. Stoick had not openly accused them of murder yet, but since they had been accused by Hiccup and there was a mess outside to clean up, he ordered them imprisoned until he sorted this out. This did not reassure either of them.

"I'm innocent! Innocent I tell you!" Snotlout screamed as he tried to shake the bars on his cell door.

"So am I!" Tuffnut yelled from his own cell. "I never hurt a hair on Hiccup's head! I hurt a bunch of the other ones, sure, but there was one particular hair I never touched!"

"Oh very funny!" Snotlout snapped, "you think that's gonna help us now?"

"Well is it any better than what you're doing? Who are you shouting at anyway?"

Snotlout stepped away from the iron door and sat down on a grungy black rock, which the entire prison was dug out from. He cell was little more than a closet sized hole cut out of the dank black stone. These cells had been built long ago, back when Berk was first being settled, and while the upper levels where the guards and administrators dwelt had been rebuild constantly, these levels were virtually unchanged since their first day in use. And all Snotlout could do was pace around or sit.

But pacing quickly grew monotonous, for he could make several complete circles within a minute. But to sit and look around was even worse. Just to gaze upon the blackness in this prison was to look at foul uncouthness at its worst. There was virtually no light, save for a faint torch lit near the back of the passage that led out of cells. The air was rank and stuffy, almost suffocating. Everything that could actually be seen in this prison was bleak and horrible, and it was meant to be that way. Never before had he felt so helpless. By the looks of it, Tuffnut was feeling little better.

"Tuff, I have to know something. Did you do it?"

"Did I kill Useless, you mean? No, I did not." Tuffnut said miserably. "Did you?"

"No."

"I know that."

The two boys nearly jumped out of their skins. The Ghost of Hiccup was sitting in a cell opposite them.

He smiled sinisterly. "Why, what's happened to the tormentors I used to know? Not so powerful now that you're in prison, are you? Throw the Emperor into a cell and it turns out he's just as much a nameless number as the slave is."

"But we didn't kill you, Hiccup!" Tuffnut cried, "Why accuse us if you know we didn't? Unless it was a mistake?"

"Have you come to tell us we're getting out of here?" Snotlout asked eagerly.

"Oh it wasn't a mistake. You boys are right where I want you."

Snotlout and Tuffnut exchanged uneasy looks. "What do you mean?"

"I know neither of you didn't kill me, but you were the worst of my bullies, so I thought a little time in prison would be a nice punishment. After all, you guys trapped me in a prison for nearly 15 years."

"No we didn't! You weren't in prison!" Tuffnut protested.

"A metaphorical prison, dummy. All that time there was no escaping you and the abuse you showered on me. I had fresh air and space to move around in, but in all other ways I was as much as prisoner as you are now." Hiccup's expression turned ugly. "And now here you are, like bears caught in a deep pit, and hardly the first ones."

Snotlout tried to act brave. "Yeah, well, guess what? You yourself said we're innocent! Once the Chief comes down here we'll tell him that and he'll let us out! Laugh all you want, _cousin_ , but we won't be here for long! You're little scheme is as useless as you are! Hah!"

Tuffnut laughed as well, but less enthusiastically, and he stopped laughing completely when he saw that Hiccup showed no signs that the words had affected him.

Instead, the ghost glanced about the cells. "This is the worst place on the entire island. Even worse than the Dragon Arena. Countless people have been thrown in here, and many never came out alive. But they're still here. Even decades and centuries later, they're still prisoners in this nightmare of a building. Don't believe me? Then just listen."

They did. At first all they heard was their own uneasy breathing, but slowly they became aware of other sounds. Voices, faint as the nighttime breeze at first, which gradually grew. They heard sounds of cell doors slamming shut and people screaming, much as they had done when they had been locked up. They heard people of every sort, women, men, and even children. And all the while they heard the screeches and scurrying of rats. Unseen the voices and sounds seemed to surround them. Snotlout and Tuffnut spun around repeatedly trying to see where the noises were coming from but there was no one else in the prison.

"Let me out of here! Let me out of here!" an invisible man pleaded.

"I want my mamma!" a child cried from behind them.

"Please, let me go! I'm innocent! I never harmed him! Please, my child needs me! Let me go to my son!" a woman screamed.

"Give us some water, there are people dying in here!"

"Kill me!" an elderly man croaked, "Just get it over with already and let me die!"

"There are rats chewing on me! Get them off of me! Help! Help!"

They heard someone coughing and vomiting, and bit by bit the coughing slowly stopped.

They heard another woman speaking with an accent in a tongue they did not know. First she sounded begging and then she cried out desperately "Non! Non!" And then they heard her screaming wordlessly while a man who sounded inebriated laughed boorishly.

They heard women singing to their dead children, and then the voices became masculine and began singing to their dead lovers. They heard drunkards singing as fierce winter storms howled around them, and the storms changed effortlessly into the roar of battle and the singers went from drunkards to soldiers, singing to rally their spirits as their bodies were split in half by swords. And then they heard the cry of the wounded. They knew that sound all too well, having heard it many times after dragon raids. It was a futile cry for help, a cry for the Gods to end it all, one way or another. It was a cry from those who had no hope there was a better day coming.

They heard people muttering and shouting incoherently, as though their minds had become unhinged. They heard the clanging of chains and the cracking of whips, followed by people of all ages crying out painfully. They heard the sound of racks turning and bones breaking, of metal burning and of weapons being sharpened. For a moment Snotlout thought they were in the forge, until he heard the sound of axes slamming into wood blocks after first cutting through human flesh. And all the while they heard the screeches and scurrying of rats.

"Hiccup, stop it!" Tuffnut suddenly shouted, "I can't take it anymore, stop it!"

"Vikings truly are great and powerful, aren't they?" was all that Hiccup said for a reply.

The noises grew even louder, so loud that Snotlout wondered why no guards had come to investigate.

"I want to go home!"

"Let me go!"

"I'm hungry," someone moaned feebly, "so…hungry…"

"No, please don't! I don't want to—"

And although they still could not see anyone and could not see what caused them to say what they did, in their terror Snotlout and Tuffnut could imagine the sorts of perverted activities that had gone on in this prison over the centuries. For them this was worse than actually seeing anything, for the imagination had no limit to how horrible a sight could be, and when they heard a woman imploring someone to save her infant, they imagined a baby as hideous as a victim of dragon fire. The sounds of rats made them imagine rats the size of dogs, with great yellow eyes, long slimy tails, and giant fangs waiting to bite into their own bodies, and thin claws ready to slice them into pieces.

They heard people laughing hysterically and imagined half decayed skeletons laughing as an executioner tried to decapitate them, only to discover that they kept laughing even with their skulls detached. And when they heard the woman speaking in the foreign tongue again, Snotlout imagined Astrid, first looking lovely as a Goddess, then suddenly changing into a voluptuous fiend with eyes blazing like meteors and skin hot as molten bronze, and then she was a living corpse with blood dripping from her mouth as she forcefully tried to make love to him.

Was this all actually happening around them or was it just their imaginations? Was this a nightmare or reality?

"LET ME OUTTA HERE!" Snotlout shouted, grabbing the bars of the door frantically. He heard an invisible phantom crying the same thing. "Hiccup, I'm serious, stop it! STOP IT!"

"Funny," Hiccup's voice said without emotion, "I can recall saying those exact same words myself once…"

The sounds and voices did not stop, but they seemed to retreat into the walls, and new ones once again reached the ears of the two teenage boys. And this time they recognized their own voices. At first it was just them laughing, along with Ruffnut, while they heard Hiccup sniffing.

"You're pathetic!" the voice of Tuffnut laughed.

"You're useless!" the voice of Snotlout jeered.

"You're pathetically useless!" the voice of Ruffnut spoke as if she had just come up with a sentence to be proud of. They heard the sounds of fists hitting a body.

Snotlout remembered this day now. It had been shortly after Dragon Training had started, though before Hiccup had begun to impress everyone. In those days, even though none of them had performed brilliantly, excluding Astrid as usual, they still found Hiccup's performance in the ring worth mocking.

"Look at him! The great Dragon Killer!"

"Let me go!" they heard Hiccup cry. There was a sickening crunching sound and Hiccup cried out in pain.

"Ha! He couldn't kill a mouse!"

"Stop it!" Hiccup begged.

"Let's tie him up a tree and leave him there!"

"Yeah! It's not like his precious daddy's around to save him this time, right?"

"Hang him upside down!"

Then they heard Astrid's voice interrupt the bullying by saying "What's going on here?"

Tuffnut remembered that moment. For a brief moment Hiccup's eyes had brightened with hope. He had probably thought Astrid had come to save him. Instead Astrid had merely glanced around, shrugged slightly, and walked away without comment. At the time Tuffnut had been so thrilled to see the hope die in Hiccup's eyes, but now he felt sick, so sick that if he had held power over Time he would have used it to undo his actions that day. Hiccup's expression had gone from hopeful to confusion to looking absolutely broken.

For the rest of this scene all he and Snotlout heard were their own laughs amidst Hiccup's pleading with them to stop, pleas which made them laugh even louder.

It had been Snotlout's idea to use a partially frayed rope to tie Hiccup to that tree, so that sooner or later the rope would snap from the weight and Hiccup would fall to the ground.

"Hopefully he'll break his neck!" he had said.

Snotlout in the cell suddenly felt a powerful grip around his own neck and for a moment was convinced Hiccup's ghost was going to strangle him. The grip relaxed almost as soon as it had started, but Snotlout shook for a while afterwards.

"So you tied me up that tree and left me there," the ghost said nonchalantly.

"Hiccup, I—"

The ghost went on as if Snotlout had not spoken. "But there was a sequel to this little experience in my life, one which nobody else ever knew about,"

They heard the sound of a branch snapping and Hiccup's cries of pain rang out again. Then they heard the sound of rain. It sounded so close and so real that they thought at first it was actually raining outside, or even inside, for the cells were likely as not to drip.

And then, with the sound of rain still present and prominent, they heard Hiccup's voice again. In between sobs he was shouting at somebody desperately.

"Come on! Go ahead and eat me! Everybody knows you guys eat humans all the time, so help yourself! Do us both a favor! Come on, I won't stop you! Just do it and get it over with! You'll get dinner and I'll be free from this place forever—we both get what we want for a change!"

"Who's he talking to?" Tuffnut whispered. Snotlout shrugged slightly.

"What are you waiting for? What's the matter with you? I'm offering myself up as a free meal; aren't you going to roast me or something? What's the matter? I thought dragons loved the taste of humans! Or am I not good enough even for that?"

"Oh gods," Tuffnut said in horror. "Hiccup tried to get eaten by dragon!"

Snotlout frowned. Was this how Hiccup had died? But that made no sense. The dragon had clearly not eaten him, because they all saw Hiccup the very next day! But dragons always went for the kill, right?

Right?

They heard Hiccup sob louder, "Oh this is just great! Terrific! My whole village hates or ignores me, and now I find even _dragons_ don't want anything to do with me! Even our sworn enemies don't want me! Why? What have I ever done to deserve all this hate? All right then, where's a knife—since even the dragons are so reluctant to put me out of my misery I'll do it myself! Oh right. Snotlout took it so I couldn't use it on him." His yell was filled with misery. "Just kill me, somebody, just end me! I can't take this anymore! I want to die!" They heard the sobbing grow even louder, though he said no more.

"So you see?" the ghost of Hiccup reappeared before them. "You drove me so far that I was willing to let a dragon eat me rather than spend another day on this rock!"

"But it didn't eat you, did it?" Tuffnut asked, "You were just fine the next day!"

"No, he didn't eat me." The ghost's face contorted, "But _that_ particular memory is one you two aren't privy to!"

"But where was this dragon?" Tuffnut pressed, "At the Arena?"

"Of course it was, dummy, where else would it have been?" Snotlout said scornfully, "I mean it's not like we've got dragons living in the woods, right?"

"I can't see how people think you're a model Viking when you've got the brains of a fish," Hiccup said with equal scorn in his voice, "unless it's another Viking trait that passed me over. You really think a dragon couldn't hide in the woods without anyone finding it?" He started laughing. "Well, my 'friends', I shall leave you to your thoughts. Pleasant dreams!"

"Hey, Hiccup, wait a minute!" Tuffnut yelled, but there was no response.

"Like I'm going to get any sleep now!" Snotlout whimpered. Even with his eyes wide opened he could not get the sights and sounds he had heard that night out of his head.

Still, he suddenly felt drained of all his energy and he collapsed onto the floor of his cell. "What are we going to do, Tuff?" he moaned.

"I don't know," Tuffnut said. He could scarcely remember a time where he had been so somber. Normally he had trouble just trying to be distressed, but tonight there had been no difficulty. He once again felt horribly sick. "We really screwed Hiccup up, didn't we?"

"Oh come on. He was hopeless even without us!" Snotlout said dismissively. "Though…I'll admit we didn't help much,"

"Much?" Tuffnut exclaimed. He was so appalled by Snotlout's words that he could think of no additional response.

"I wonder if it's daylight yet," Snotlout said after a while.

"I don't know,"

Few things had ever felt longer than a night where there was no way to tell the time. For all they knew a pause in any conversation might have lasted a minute or five hours. The moments went on forever.

And then Snotlout sat bolt upright. "Did you hear that?"

"Oh no," Tuffnut said fearfully. It was the sound of a woman crying for death to take her. The voices they had heard earlier were returning. The nightmare of sound was starting again.

Snotlout and Tuffnut tried to ignore it, but however hard they tried they once again heard people of all ages and genders making impassioned pleas to invisible captors.

"Spare him; take me!" an old woman pleaded.

"Don't hurt her! I'll do anything!" A man cried. If ever defeat was discernable in a voice, it was in this one.

"Let me out of here! I want to go home!" a boy wept.

"I want to talk to the Chief! I'm innocent! Let me talk to the Chief!"

And it only got worse, for now they started hearing the voices of the captors too.

"Ah shut up, you piece of filth!"

"One more sound out of you and I'll squeeze your eyes out!"

"Lookee here, guys! This one thinks if he begs hard enough we'll give him something to eat! How about we make him taste my whip?"

"Yeah, go ahead!" others jeered excitedly, "Do it! Do it!"

"Hit her legs with the hammer! See how long it takes 'em to break!"

Snotlout and Tuffnut tried very hard not to imagine the scenes that the voices were recreating, scenes that had really happened who knows how long ago.

They could hear once again floggings and the wheel of the rack, and in addition to the screams of the victims they could hear the laughter of the torturers. Snotlout and Tuffnut noticed uncomfortably eerie similarities between that kind of laughter and the way they had laughed themselves when picking on Hiccup. All kinds of verbal abuse were shouted as others pleaded for mercy, from jeers to villainous oaths.

And perhaps the worst of it was the fact that they would never be able to forget any of this. Even as the voices died out, which they did from time to time, there was no forgetting what they had heard and the images they had conjured in their minds as a result. There was no escaping from this nightmare. The two were so horrified they might have hanged themselves if they had had the means to.

Yet even worse was the urging to do something to help the miserable souls, while knowing it was already far too late. When they heard children begging for a morsel of food they wanted to give them something, anything, but such wants were vain and pointless.

Snotlout started crying. He tried to disguise it from Tuffnut, but Tuffnut hardly cared about appearances anymore. "Let it end, let it end!" he whimpered as he clung to the vest he was using as a pillow. In the excitement of the raid nobody had either thought or wanted to give them any basic comforts for their stay, which made matters even bleaker for them.

They both wondered if this had been how Hiccup had felt, and knew beyond any excuses now that they especially had been largely responsible for it.

And all the while they heard the screeches and scurrying of rats. Unfortunately, Tuffnut soon discovered there were real ones present as well. They did not bother the humans, but it was a real shock to gaze at a wall, see a pair of eyes looking back, and hear tiny claws scratching on stone as the creature darted away. And Odin knew how many rats were hiding behind the walls or under the floor. The two prisoners began imagining huge underground nests of filth that held millions of rats, all of them hissing and biting at anything that dared approached them, ferociously devouring all the polluted and unwanted waste of the village, and slipping out into the village in the dead of night to feed on prisoners and children.

The Vikings of Berk hardly thought of the prison these days, for it was not used too often, as made evident by the fact that there were no additional prisoners. Yet the neglect did in some ways made the prison appear even more appalling, for it showed that not only had past generations used it extensively with cruel and barbaric intentions, but that more recent generations had overlooked and forgotten about the horrors that had been carried out within these walls.

Tuffnut wished dragons had destroyed this place when it had first been built. Snotlout vowed that when he was Chief his first act would be to destroy it, with his own hands and alone if he had to.

The following morning Stoick ordered the prisoners brought before him in Mead Hall. They told him as much about what they had seen and heard that night as they dared to reveal, and trembled throughout the retelling. Ordinarily Stoick, and the population of Berk in general, would have considered men saying such things to be mad and locked them up for good, but they all knew this was no ordinary situation. And when it was revealed that Hiccup in fact had lied about Tuffnut and Snotlout being his killers, Stoick gave them a full apology. Spitelout Jorgenson had also been able to provide them with alibis for the time when Hiccup died.

"When the ships had returned they had been repairing a fence they had smashed the day before. Sentry Nosebrain Griegson was watching them."

"I'm sorry I could not come sooner," the man said apologetically, "I was busy guarding the sheep during the raid and had no idea about the arrest, even less of what it was for, until Jorgenson found me this morning."

So with that Snotlout and Tuffnut were set at liberty and Berk was denied the dramatic entertainment of a murder trial.

"Now," Stoick said after helping himself to a mug of mead and putting a block of ice on his head for the headache he could feel coming. "I've made up my mind. Life is hard enough as it is. We don't need ghosts and demons and Loki knows what else falsely accusing our own and bringing down buildings and keeping us up night and day."

"He also saved two of us during the raid," someone pointed out.

"That's like saying a storm also gave us some rainwater after it wrecked our crops and homes. No. I have had enough of this ghost business."

"Um, Chief? You might not want to talk like that, in case Hiccup hears you," Fishlegs said timidly. Stoick fixed him with such an intimidating glare that the boy nearly melted on the spot.

"But what are we supposed to do about it?" Spitelout Jorgenson demanded.

"That ghost said he wasn't given a proper funeral, yes? And he said that he was hit by a projectile and drowned, yes? Then we will search the coast waters for my son's corpse, and when we find it we will give him a proper funeral." Stoick declared flatly.

"That's not going to be easy," one woman commented, "and with the winter almost upon us…"

"I don't care! We're finding that body if we have to search all year for it!"

Everybody saw there was no shifting Stoick on this and dispensed with any reservations they might have had.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

When Stoick had a goal in mind he seldom tolerated anything interfering with it or hindering him, and now that he had made up his mind to find Hiccup's body and bury it properly, the only things that could have stopped him were the discovery of the dragon nest at Helheim's Gate or his own death. Once the weather was adequate for his purpose, which took a maddening two days, every boat Berk had available was out in the water by the afternoon and the Vikings began the long, drawn out process of searching for a corpse on the ocean floor.

It was easier said than done, for visibility was very limited, and in many places it was impossible to see all the way to the bottom. The only way around this was to have people dive into the sea and look around while submerged, rather like pearl fishers. It was a risky venture at the best of times, for in addition to the obvious risk of drowning, there was also the possibility of freezing to death. While the sky over Berk had cleared enough, the sun warmed nothing, least of all the ocean depths. The sea around Berk was never very warm to begin with, and by this time of year it was downright frigid and would only get colder until well after Thawfest. But Stoick persisted and set the example, so all anyone could do was grit their teeth, hold their breath, and pray Hiccup's body would be found quickly so they would not need to make more than one dive.

From some of the boats it was possible to see Hiccup's ghost wandering around on the seaside cliffs. Astrid explained to the people on her boat that, according to Hiccup, ghosts could only move on water at certain times of day.

"So we're as safe from him now as we ever will be?" someone asked, looking very relieved.

"You could say that," Astrid muttered. She glanced at Snotlout, who had been 'volunteered' by his father to join the search. Ever since his night in jail he had been incredibly downcast, jumpy, and quiet. The same could be said of the Thorsten Twins. While it was true Ruffnut had not been imprisoned, she had reacted to her brother's arrest very badly and was at that very moment ill and confined to her bed. So was Tuffnut. Astrid was not too sure about what Hiccup had done, because Tuffnut and Snotlout were completely refusing to talk about it now, but whatever it was it had been very effective. She could not recall ever seeing them so glum or less talkative.

Soon they were not the only ones who were in low spirits. Most of the searchers were not participating whole heartedly in the first place, and as the day slipped by without any success, they began to grow impatient and careless. Only on Stoick's boat was the dedication to the task maintained, and that was largely because the Chief was present. On all the other boats the dives became brief, ineffective, and after a while nonexistent. Everyone just decided they had searched enough for the day and with Stoick not present to give contrary orders they left it at that.

Fishlegs Ingerman was on Stoick's boat as a rower. Despite having the word 'Fish' in his name, he was an incompetent swimmer. Stoick did not call upon him to join in the diving but to merely keep the boat steady and on course. As the afternoon wore on they still had not found anything and Stoick himself was almost forced to admit the failure of the day. While he wanted to keep searching he knew it would be more practical to turn the boats around before it grew dark and trust to better luck tomorrow. While he was making up his mind, Fishlegs stood up in the boat, stretching his legs and his aching back whilst admiring the view of Berk from the sea. In an endless cycle the seawater rolled into the smooth cliffs and shot upwards, spraying everything within its reach.

Then someone shoved him and he fell into the sea before he knew what was happening.

He was so startled to be in the frigid water that he opened his mouth to scream, only for his cry to be met with the onrush of seawater. He flailed his arms helplessly, trying to stay afloat and get someone's attention. The water pounded against his ears like a hammer. Every movement felt like being stabbed by a knife. He could almost feel his body shrinking and shriveling up as he grew colder.

And then, unexpectedly, someone or something grabbed his hand, but they did not pull him out of the water, but instead began to pull him through it.

"And they called _me_ useless?" someone shouted. Fishlegs was too shocked to recognize the voice or really even understand what they were saying. "They've got 20 boats out and still can't find one stupid body? How useless was I, really?"

Fishlegs hardly knew what was happening to him. He was being dragged through the ocean, freezing cold water slapping against his face so much he could hardly draw breath, and he could feel his limbs growing numb.

And then, all of sudden, they stopped. Only then did Fishlegs see that he had been pulled by invisible hands. He guessed easily whose they were, and his guess was confirmed within moments by Hiccup's voice telling him to take a deep breath. Fishlegs had barely the time to comprehend and obey this when he was shoved underwater.

It took him a few precious moments to orientate himself. Once he did he managed to glimpse an undersea world of small rocks and sand. Smooth dull colored pebbles with silt to fill in the gaps, and the whole floor was literally nothing else. There were no fish anywhere, nor any aquatic plants. Fishlegs had often heard stories of waters so teaming with fish a man could walk across them, of great and colorful reefs, and literal forests of kelp and seaweed, yet such waters always seemed to be in someone else's territory.

Not forgetting that he only had a few moments at best, he waved his arms so he could slowly turn around in the water. And then he saw the body of a large black dragon in the seabed. Not too far from it was Hiccup's corpse.

Both bodies were considerably worse for wear. They were recognizable but showed signs of decay and of being fed upon. They also showed signs that their final moments had not been peaceful. Some of their limbs were lying at odd, unnatural angles, and Fishlegs could make out some small distance away the faint shape of a boulder, the general size of which was equal to the boulders Berk used to fire from her catapults.

Fishlegs quickly fought his way to the surface, gasping for air. He had half expected Hiccup's ghost to pull him up but the ghost seemed to have disappeared and Fishlegs hardly had the inclination to look for him. He was more concerned about getting out of the water. Fortunately Stoick's boat was making for him as fast as they could row. Unfortunately it took a while to reach him and by the time they pulled him out he was shivering so badly they could have put him over a fire and he would have called it merely 'temperate'. His teeth were chattering so badly he could not have said a word if his life depended on it, so Stoick gave the order to head for shore. It was not until they returned to the village that Fishlegs was able to tell them, briefly, what he had seen.

Stoick thanked him and sent him to Gothi, and sent another Viking out to spread the word that the search would restart in the morning. So absorbed was he in his thoughts that he left Fishlegs to walk to Gothi's place alone.

"Rather rude of him," Fishlegs muttered as he rubbed his arms, "I nearly drown and freeze to death and he's only thinking about other things. But then, he is the Chief,"

"That's how it usually goes." Hiccup appeared next to him. Fishlegs did not even flinch.

"Thanks for that, by the way. You could've just told me where to look." He said crossly.

"It was revenge," Hiccup replied softly.

Fishlegs frowned. "Revenge?"

"Imagine friendship is a boat. You pushed me out of ours and left me to flounder and drown while you sat safely with the Jorgenson and Thorsten bullies. Call us even now." He disappeared before Fishlegs could speak again.

Fishlegs now walked to Gothi's hut feeling even more miserable than before, because he knew the metaphor had been accurate.

Stoick was now pacing back and forth in his house. A horde of Vikings were with him. A fire was blazing away, and by its light they were able to gaze at a crude map of Berk.

"So the body is located right here," Stoick announced, "We'll bury it as soon as we get it up. Phlegm, talk to Gothi tomorrow and see that preparations are made for another funeral."

"Yes Chief, I'll see to it."

"And Fishlegs said a black dragon was in the water next to it," Spitelout said, "what kinds of dragons are black?"

"Whispering Deaths and Night Furies," he was informed, "and judging by the description that was no Whispering Death."

"So that means we finally have a dead Night Fury," Stoick said happily, "That head will be a fine trophy to hang in on Mead Hall, wouldn't you agree?"

As everyone nodded the walls began to shake. Hiccup's ghost literally stepped out of the roaring fireplace. "You pieces of rotting flesh won't touch him!"

Stoick hardly jumped when he saw Hiccup but the harsh words amazed him. He had never heard Hiccup speak like that before. The ghost's gray eyes were positively blazing with anger such as Stoick had never seen in his boy.

"What do you mean by that?" Stoick asked, forcing himself to stay calm.

"Exactly what I said! Which word did you not understand?"

"And what concern is it of yours?" demanded Spitelout Jorgenson. "It's a dragon! It's a dragon and you're a ghost!"

"And you're a human. What concern is it of _yours_? He's dead and gone forever, so leave what's left of him in peace, or so help me, I'll bring down every roof on the whole island and then I'll _start_ getting vengeful!"

Stoick said, "Hiccup, why are you defending that dragon so much? It killed you!"

"Do you never listen to me? I thought after I'd died you might look back, reflect on where things went wrong, and desire to make up for your failings, and yet now that I'm back among you, what happens? You instantly revert to your old habits and ignore what I say, just like you always have!"

"But son, it's a Night Fury! Think of the prestige and honor such a trophy will bring to Berk!"

"You found a corpse underwater. Oh yes, a very brave and dangerous adventure, a very brave bunch of Vikings you are, bringing a dead dragon up from the shallows to put on display. Very brave indeed!" he spat. "You couldn't even find him without the help of a ghost!"

"You won't be a ghost for long, son," Stoick replied, "We'll get you up tomorrow and have the funeral at once. You'll be in Valhalla before you know it!"

"And you'll be rid of me, so we'll both happy for once, won't we?" Hiccup said with such obvious sarcasm it made several people wince. "You don't even know who killed me! Do you even care about finding that out? And if you even think about saying it was the dragon—"

Stoick held up his hands. He smiled and shook his head in a condescending way, as if he knew a simple truth that Hiccup was too stupid to see. "All right, perhaps the dragon didn't kill you directly. I think I know what's happened now. The dragon found you in the woods and carried you off. One of the villagers saw the beast flying away and, quite naturally, shot at it. The shot was good and sent the dragon into the sea. Unfortunately, you went with it. I'm sorry son, truly, but it was an accidental death, and all my apologies can't restore you to life, so I don't see what more I can do. But I assure you, son, we'll send you to Valhalla, and you'll be happy there, so there's nothing more to worry about." He would have put his hands reassuringly on Hiccup's shoulders except they went right through him.

But Hiccup was not reassured at all. Instead he smiled icily, as if _he_ knew a simple truth that Stoick was too stupid to see. "Oh, Dad, you think you're so clever. But there's one problem with your little theory. I wasn't 'carried off' by any dragon."

Stoick looked confused and angry. "Explain yourself for once then,"

"I hadn't planned to tell you this. I thought 'let him spend the rest of his life never knowing what really happened', but I think the truth will hurt you even more. So tell me: what do you plan to do about the dragons around here?"

"Kill them of course!"

"Why?"

Stoick was growing annoyed. "Haven't I taught you anything? They raid us! They attack us, steal our flocks, they're dangerous monsters, and they've killed—!"

"Hundreds of us, yes, we know. It seems you say that every time this comes up." The ghost snapped impatiently, "Well I've spoken to a few of those hundreds, and you know what? They all said that they don't care about people avenging them. Your bloodlust certainly hasn't helped _them_ out in any way! They wish you'd learn from the past and find another way to end the war instead of making the same mistakes we've been making for centuries. Good grief, Stoick, you're a man who keeps ramming his head against a brick wall to get it to fall over, and instead of trying to go over or under or around it you just keep on ramming, even when that's clearly not working! When is this going to stop?"

"When they are all dead of course!"

"And here's more of the ramming. You don't even know what you're talking about! How many thousands of dragons have been killed in the last 300 years, yet they keep coming, don't they?"

"And once we find the nest we'll be able to wipe them out for good!"

"And here's even more of the ramming. People have been trying for 300 years to find that nest! How many lives did you lose on the last expedition? Who's to say the next one will have any better luck? What are you trying to do, throw bodies into the jaws of death in the hopes that the mouth will eventually be so full it can't eat any more? Do you want Berk to be doing this another 300 years from now? My point is: don't you think it's about time to try something else?"

"Like what?" Stoick spat, "what could possibly work that we haven't tried yet?"

"How about befriending them?"

Nobody knew whether to burst into laughter or feel insulted at such an idea, so they exchanged perplexed glances.

Then Stoick laughed. "Ha! Befriend them? Haha, that's a good one, son! You always did dream of impossible things—like thinking Astrid would ever fall in love with you, remember that? Hahaha!"

Hiccup's fists tightened and he vanished briefly. When he reappeared he was holding a piece of parchment. "Here,"

It was a picture of him hugging a black dragon. Even though it was a drawing there was clearly love and affection in the eyes of both figures.

As Stoick held the parchment his hands began to shake and contort, until the parchment was crumpled up. "It's true, then?" he asked in a deadly whisper.

"I freely admit it," Hiccup replied smugly.

"You…you actually…"

"I met a dragon, befriended him, named him, spent time with him, learned from him, and even flew through the air on him—and the whole time kept him hidden from everybody! Hah!" he burst into a loud laugh that abruptly dissolved into a sob.

Stoick's face turned red. Everybody else in the room was shocked and afraid to move or even speak.

"You befriended—"

"Yes I did! And though it ended up costing me my life, if I had the chance to do it again, I would—only I would speed things up so we'd have more time together! How impossible does it sound now?"

Stoick nearly exploded. "You…you traitor! Didn't I teach you anything? Didn't I—"

"Oh yes you did. You taught me that dragons are dangerous beasts that only go for the kill. Well I wasn't killed by a dragon, but by a human!"

"You've disgraced us! How dare you even think of looking at me like that? You little piece of filth—you—" he was so angry he could not speak.

Hiccup looked around at everyone else. "Well don't just stand there! Let's hear the pigs in the room squeal a few times because something happened that they don't like! Go ahead and disown me, if you think it'll change anything! Throw me out into the streets if you can, you pack of rabid moles! Oh, what's the matter, too scared to move faster than a starfish? Call me 'useless' if it'll help! But the truth is I made friends with a Night Fury, and I named him Toothless, and the only person on this pile of rocks who has even came close to equaling his kindness is Gobber—one dragon showed me more kindness and friendship than an entire village! Sleep on that, if you can! Try and wrap your acorn sized brains around it! Oh, and one more thing, remember how during the last raid so many dragons were getting away even after you thought you'd trapped them?"

This sent them into pure outrage. "It was you!" Spitelout Jorgenson shouted, "You helped those beasts escape!"

"Guilty as charged! What are you going to do about it?"

Stoick might have half strangled the boy if he could have actually held him. Spitelout would probably have strangled him entirely.

Hiccup just laughed, and his laughter grew shrill. He sounded half mad. "I rescued them because I am sick of violence and pointless bloodshed. You bunch of idiots are in a war you can never hope to win, and you keep going because you can't bear the thought of giving up! Fine, make the island suffer for your stubbornness, but you aren't going to make any more dragons suffer too if I have anything to say about it!"

"They attack _us_!" Stoick roared.

"Well who was here first: the Vikings or the dragons? A bunch of people in boats showed up one day and declared this was where they would live. Didn't they ever think that perhaps there might be wildlife living here that would object to this or try to take advantage of it? I seriously doubt they ever did. Vikings are about as agreeable and considerate as an ulcer. And we've stuck it out this whole time, well congratulations for proving your resistance in the face of adversity. You've gotten a lot of people killed and haven't gained a thing, of course, but at least you proved your resistance in the face of adversity! Honestly, Dad, you said Vikings can conquer mountains and tame the seas: you can't even keep control over what happens on this stupid little rock!"

"And you think we should just leave?" Stoick shouted.

"I'm just saying it's time to change tactics. I made friends with a dragon, and until our untimely deaths it was going very well."

"I'll bet it was just playing friendly so it could eat you at the right moment." Spitelout spat.

"You don't have a clue of what you're talking about—as usual." Hiccup retorted, "You were just shouting that dragons are mindless beasts that always go for the kill, and now you're suggesting they are cunning creatures who wait for the right moment to strike—and pass up a million good chances in the process? Smart or dumb, which is it? Or is it just whatever suits your drive to satisfy your own bloodlust and pride at the moment? That's what this all really is about, you know. You swine are so proud you'd rather destroy the island and everyone on it than have it be said you gave up."

The Vikings were stunned. Not only was Hiccup talking in ways they had never heard nor imagined they would ever hear, but he had turned the tables on them. Upon his revelation one might have expected Hiccup would be forced to defend his behavior, but instead he had turned the argument around and put them on the defensive! Instead of merely defending why he had broken with Berk customs, he was essentially demanding why Berk had ended up with those customs to begin with.

Hiccup took a deep breath. "I repeat what I said. You won't touch that dragon. And now that you know it's possible to be around one without any risk, perhaps you'll reconsider your options. Or more likely I'll be seeing the ghosts of your loved ones later on. Think about it."

"What did I ever do to make you hate me so much, that you would disgrace us like this?" Stoick cried.

For the first time, Hiccup's voice trembled. "Hate you? I _wish_ I hated you! It would make this so much easier! You think I like it, looking at a man whom I once practically worshiped, looked up to, and respected, and knowing it was only an illusion that bit by bit has been broken? You think I like seeing what our relationship is today and comparing it to what it was so many years ago? You think I like being able to recall a distant time when you actually cared about me and wishing for those days to come back somehow? What made you hate _me_ so much that you've hardly even cared about finding who actually killed me?"

Stoick tried to look indifferent. "What difference can it make? Finding your killer won't bring you back."

"The same could be said about mom, yet you thought of nothing _but_ finding her killer when _she_ died!" Hiccup shouted accusingly.

Stoick shrugged. "Maybe I've learned that revenge doesn't help."

"Or maybe you just don't care enough about me to bother. And you have the nerve and stupidity to wonder why I turned to a Night Fury for comfort. It's not like I had any _humans_ I could turn to!"

"You _would_ have!" Stoick insisted, "If you'd just been a little more—"

"I've heard enough."

Hiccup vanished. The picture, which Stoick was still clenching, was pulled from his fist. A moment later one of the windows shattered, followed by another one, and another.

"Hiccup, stop it!" Stoick yelled.

"This is story of our relationship. One by one every tie that connected us shatters!"

Stoick tried to reassert his parental authority. "Now you listen here, young man, keep this up and I won't give you a proper funeral! You'll be a ghost forever!"

Hiccup laughed even louder. "Then my body will remain where it belongs next to Toothless, and I'll haunt Berk forever! Or until I get bored or you succeed in destroying it, whichever comes first!"

"Son, be reasonable—"

Another window was smashed. "You lost the right to call me that a very long time ago."

Every window in Stoick's house was smashed that night. The entire village heard the mad cries that wavered between laughter and sobbing.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

Word spread like wildfire around Berk. Hiccup the Useless had actually befriended a dragon. Hiccup the Fishbone had met a dragon and instead of killing it or it killing him, the two had apparently become friends. While this certainly answered a few questions, it still left so many unanswered and raised many more, and since the possible answers went so much against everyone's upbringing, nobody could bring themselves to credit what they heard. It just did not seem possible that a dragon, a _Night Fury_ , of all beasts, had been tamed. It had to be a trick or something. If it was a Terrible Terror, such a thing might be marginally plausible, but not a dragon as feared as a Night Fury!

And yet Hiccup had said it loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear. He had made friends with a dragon. And said dragon was a Night Fury. Unless he was severely delusional or this was some very poorly rendered joke, it was the truth.

Few wanted to believe it, but Hiccup did not care one bit now whether they did or not. He was past trying to impress the village, and could hardly have cared if the fools had believed him to be a monkfish who had befriended a horse. The afternoon after destroying his father's windows he was sitting on a rock, watching the boats out at sea.

"If they try to bring him up to stick on someone's wall, I'll take him back and sink the boat as soon as it's high tide again," he muttered. "Nobody's putting _you_ on display, bud! Oh Toothless, Toothless, who'd have ever thought things would turn out like this?"

He thought back to the memory he had revealed in part to Snotlout and Tuffnut. He thought of the portion he had not allowed them to know about; the part that came after he had tried to get Toothless to eat him.

Hiccup smiled slightly. "He wasn't called that yet, of course,"

He saw it in his memory as if it was happening right before him at that very moment.

After realizing the Night Fury was not going to eat him, he had flopped into the mud, chuckling hopelessly while weeping. "Oh, this is just perfect," he had managed to choke out, "Even the dragons don't want anything to do with me!"

He had then become aware of the dragon getting closer to him, looking at him curiously. It had been so strange to look into the creature's eyes. It was as though it knew and understood something of what he was going through. Hiccup had never read so much sympathy in a gaze before. Even though the dragon was mute, Hiccup could understand exactly what it was conveying to him just by looking at him with those deep green eyes and rounded black pupils.

"I know it's hard," the dragon had seemed to say, "I know what it's like,"

Perhaps he had only been imagining these words because he wanted to believe the dragon understood him. He had wondered about that a few times. But he was convinced he had not imagined it.

Hiccup had tried to touch the dragon then—or more correctly he had been about to throw his arms around the dragon's neck and hug the stuffing out of it—but they were still on distant terms in those days, and the Night Fury would not permit them to touch. Still, on that night Hiccup suddenly saw that he did have something to keep him going. He had become incredibly curious about this Night Fury and he had wanted to find out more. Suddenly he had found a reason to stay alive and he took it.

He bowed his head in grief. "I'm so glad I haven't told anyone else about any of that. They wouldn't have understood. They'd have called me crazy or something. When they look at dragons all they see are the fangs and claws and the fire coming out of their mouths. They never think to look at the eyes and see the intelligent and caring being that exists in them."

And it had only gotten better from that night on. There came that wonderful afternoon where he and Toothless had finally bonded. And before he had known it, the dragon were not only tolerating his presence but appeared to even prefer it, and soon he was helping fix the dragon's tail, which had been damaged when Hiccup had shot him down. Then he named him 'Toothless', for the dragon could appear to be that way due to his retractable teeth, and they were actually managing to fly together, even though Vikings had always called such a thing impossible and Toothless's damaged tail had seemed irreparable.

Hiccup sighed. "I really did it. I made a dragon fly again. I actually flew through the air. That tailfin was probably my greatest creation. And to think, they never appreciated my talents here. The first Viking—the first _human_ , perhaps, to create a means to fly, and they thought my inventions were a waste of time and space, just like I was. Not even Gobber bothered to pay much attention to my inventions."

But they had paid attention all right, after he used some of the tricks he had learned from Toothless, to fend off dragons during training. He smiled at how stunned everyone had looked when he drove back a Hideous Zippleback without even touching it. While living a double life had been tricky, and there was always the possibility of discover looming like a dark cloud on his sunny horizon, during those days he seemed on the brink of really achieving something. He was finally making a name for himself in a good way on Berk, he finally had a friend, and he finally had a project that was worthy of his talents.

And oh, how good it had felt to fly! How wonderful it had been to get off the ground, feel the wind rip through his hair and make his clothes flap about, to feel the peculiar sensation of his stomach practically leaping into his ribs, and to feel a sense of freedom such as he had never felt before in his life. Staring at the vast horizon from a hundred meters up, Berk was suddenly insignificant. It had felt as though there was nothing to stop them from going around the world a few times, of going anywhere they wanted, of going to a million places where nobody had ever gone before! He had lived for 15 years on Berk, and as far as he could remember he had never felt like he had belonged there. After spending less than 15 minutes up in the air, he knew this was where he was born to be. Him and Toothless flying wherever they pleased throughout the wide world.

And just as they started trying to fly in the opened air the horrible moment arrived which resulted in both their deaths. In those few seconds everything had shattered, just like the windows he had smashed the night before.

He bowed his head in grief again, and this time clenched it in his hands. He was a ghost haunting a place, and that one fatal moment was what haunted him.

He briefly ran through his list of suspects in his head. It was growing shorter all the time now. He knew who had not been on Berk that day, and of those who there were only three who had yet to provide him with alibis, because he had yet to ask about them.

So what was he going to do now?

His gaze fell upon the Vikings in the boats again. They were pulling his corpse out of the ocean. If they gave it a proper funeral this time, his days in this world were numbered. It seemed weird to think so. He had already died once, and yet he felt like he had just been informed this was the last day of his life. Even after going through death, he had no idea of what alternatives there were to permanently existing as a specter.

And what if they did not give him a proper funeral? What if they declined to do it, or messed it up or something? What if the Gods decided he should stay as a ghost anyway?

He looked around as if the rocks would answer. He still had to find out who it was who had killed them. He was growing less interested in avenging himself, but he was downright angry that his killer had also killed Toothless. He wanted them punished for that. He doubted Stoick would punish anyone for killing a dragon, but they had also killed him, and Stoick would hopefully not overlook that. And if for some reason Stoick declined to punish the culprit, whoever they were, than Hiccup vowed he would do it for him.

But truth be told, once he finished with his revenge he had no interest in staying on Berk. If he was indeed going to be a ghost forever, he would leave and find ways to explore the rest of the world. It would doubtless be a long and lonely process, and it would certainly never be as great as it would have been if Toothless was present, but it was the best option he could see. It would certainly be better than sitting on this rock and watching everyone grow old and die while he still resembled a 15 year old boy. He wondered idly what Snotlout would look like in old age.

"Assuming Astrid lets him live that long," he snorted. He wondered what she would look like in old age, but he quickly shoved the idea from his mind. Though he no longer loved her, indeed now he wondered if he ever truly did, thinking about her still made him miserable. He knew that there was no chance they could ever be together now. If Astrid ever did choose someone to love and to grow old with, there was absolutely no chance now that it would ever be him. She could not even touch him now. And when he had touched her it felt as lifeless as touching a log or a piece of metal.

He felt miserable and could not be comforted. Toothless would never nuzzle him again, never wrestle playfully with him, never demonstrate some new and fascinating ability dragons had, and he would never even lick him again.

"You know, Bud, we never did come up with an excuse for why my shirts looked so slobbery." Hiccup said, as though Toothless was right behind him.

But he felt even worse for Toothless. He, Hiccup, at least existed in some form. A horrible existence, true, and one he did not relish being in, but unless the Gods gave animals privileges which he did not know about, then Toothless had no existence at all anymore. And for him, that seemed like an even worse fate than his own, for both him and Toothless.

He looked at the cloudy horizon longingly.

The sky was indeed cloudy, but only partially. All of the clouds made irregular and elongated shapes, rather like palm branches. The sky in between them was dull and muted, as if trying to decide whether it should become gloomy gray or cheerful blue and had settled on some vague compromise. The air tasted fresh, as though rain was on the way, which given this time was year was very likely.

The Vikings out on the ocean, who hoped very much that it would not rain until they were back on Berk, had finally managed to bring Hiccup's body to the surface. Stoick had reluctantly decided to leave the Night Fury where it was, not out of respect for Hiccup's wishes or fear of his threats, but because he realized they had no practical means of lifting its massive body from the seabed.

Hiccup's body looked just like the ghost did only it was more decomposed. It was horribly cold, pale, and clammy, and a lot of the skin looked unnaturally smooth, almost like melting wax. His limbs cracked at odd moments, indicating some of the bones were broken. His face looked both frantic and drowsy, if such a combination was possible: his eyes were partially closed, which accounted for the sleepy appearance, but the rest of his expression exhibited alarm and fear.

Stoick could hardly bring himself to look at the body. He had known for weeks now that his son was dead, yet seeing the body now seemed to bring it home to him. And this left him conflicted, for he was still seething with anger over how the boy's ghost had been behaving and for the revelations that he had learned.

"The boy I reared from nothing," he muttered, as they slowly rowed back to shore, "the boy Valka gave birth to…an embarrassment, a traitor, a failure…and taken from me before he had a chance to redeem himself or finally amount to something."

"Would you really call him a traitor?" Gobber asked.

"He said it himself he was best friends with a dragon! He was consorting with our enemy!" But Stoick had to wonder if he truly meant what he was saying.

"There's no law on Berk that says anything about interacting with dragons. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if we have any laws about dragons at all. Most of our rules about dealing with dragons are just passed down customs,"

"Exactly! He betrayed those customs! Legally or not, he turned against everything it means to be a Viking, and for what? Odin, what did I ever do to deserve such a son? If it wasn't for the fact that any stable regime needs a successor, I'd almost say Chiefs shouldn't even have children!"

Gobber looked thoughtful. He said very gently, "Yes, I know you've often acted that way. You've done a very good job as a Chief, Stoick. Holding Berk together in the face of all the adversity, sharing and shouldering all the dangers, reassuring everyone after a raid that it will be all right, that we'll continue to endure, and being quick to lend a hand or direct something. But when did you ever give a hand of reassurance to Hiccup? When he was upset did you assure him it would be all right? When he was looking up to you in those early years, thinking that his dad was the greatest man in the world and would always take care of everything, did you ever give him a word of encouragement, or when he was having a problem did you stop to show him how to properly do something?"

Stoick had been standing stone faced, but now he spoke. "You know I showed him the proper way to do things! It's not my fault he wouldn't listen or wasn't physically capable of doing something!"

Gobber sighed. "Stoick, you pushed him too hard at first. You were sprinting and never stopped to let him catch up. And as he fell further behind your expectations you gave up on him."

"Well, if you saw he was having so much trouble, why didn't _you_ do anything about it?"

"I tried," Gobber said sadly, "But like you, I have a job that requires constant attention. You say Chiefs shouldn't have children; I almost say nobody with a job should have children. It's just so hard trying to divide your time between your needs and wants and the needs and wants of those who can't manage alone. And then before you know it, the children are gone, one way or another," he sniffed, "and all those years you missed have passed and the upcoming years have gone with them. And once they're gone, you look back on your own life and wonder if any of it was actually worth it. And it's too late to do anything about it."

Stoick stared at the sky behind Gobber.

The five teens were strolling along the beach watching the process out at sea, and unaware that Hiccup's ghost was on the hills directly behind them.

"It's hard to believe, isn't it?" Tuffnut remarked, "Hiccup of all people actually tamed a dragon."

"A Night Fury, no less," Snotlout added. "Unbelievable. I know Hiccup's done some bizarre things but that one takes the cake!"

"I'm kinda jealous. We could've used such a dragon to pull pranks on Mildew! Oh, what fun we'd have had!"

"It certainly explains how he got so good in training," Astrid observed. "I often suspected he was training with someone on the side, but I _never_ imagined he was getting help from an actual dragon!"

"Yeah, who'd have thought it?" Ruffnut muttered, "Hiccup the Useless makes friends with a Night Fury."

"I almost have to wonder why you guys bullied him so much," Fishlegs said, trying to keep the harshness out of his voice but not quite succeeding. "It seems to me a boy who could do something that remarkable would never lack for friends."

"What do you mean by 'you guys'?" Snotlout asked sharply. He sounded like his old self. "You bullied him too!"

"I didn't." Fishlegs said heavily, "I just abandoned him to the wolves to keep myself safe."

"You still picked on him." Tuffnut said, "You teased him quite a few times!"

"Sure, but friends and family members often tease each other. I never meant anything harmful and he knew it. At least, I hope he knew it," He shuddered, "Oh guys, what was the point of all the bullying? What did anybody ever gain from singling out Hiccup and beating him to a pulp or breaking his spirits? How did that kind of… _persecution_ benefit anybody?" He looked at them accusingly.

"It made me feel better about myself," Snotlout said glumly, "I could say 'at least I'm not doing as badly as _he_ is'."

"It was entertaining," Tuffnut went on, looking at the ground shamefully.

"It was fun to think up creative things to do to him," Ruffnut said, her tone filled with bitterness and regret.

"It was easier to think about myself and leave him to take care of his own problems," Astrid said hollowly, "Dear Odin, we're really rotten people."

The others nodded gloomily in agreement.

"Yeah,"

"Yep,"

"Uh-huh,"

"Rotten. Hiccup found that a dragon was better company than any of us."

They drifted apart for a while, each left to their own thoughts. Tuffnut shuffled about through the sand pebbles. Ruffnut looked ready to cry. Snotlout stayed where he was, looking ill. Astrid sat down on a rock and stared out to sea, unaware that the boy who had had a major crush on her was doing the same thing at that very moment and equally unaware that they both were so very miserable. Ruffnut might be near tears, but she was a Hofferson and they did not cry. Or so she told herself. At least, they did not cry where others might see them.

It felt a bit petty and arrogant to feel that way, just as it had been petty and arrogant to not treat Hiccup with any consideration. Fishlegs had been right, she thought, for all the antagonism showered upon Hiccup, his tormentors had not gained a single benefit from it.

Fishlegs sat down on an old white log and flipped through his journal. He had been hoping Hiccup's ghost would appear before him sooner or later, because he had all kinds of questions he wanted to ask about. He wanted Hiccup to tell him everything he could about what it was like to be a ghost and what Night Furies were truly like. These two broad subjects contained entire legions of additional questions, and Fishlegs wanted all the answers. To be the first to write in depth about the living dead _and_ Night Furies was an opportunity he could not dream of passing up.

He also wanted to use the time to apologize and try to make peace with Hiccup. He felt he owed it to both of them to try. But he had not seen Hiccup since the walk to Gothi's hut, and the sight of Hiccup's body being discovered worried him. If Stoick had the funeral soon, there would be no chance to talk with Hiccup ever again. Fishlegs shook his head. They could not have the funeral now, not when questions were finally starting to get answered and they were beginning to realize the full potential of the current situation!

Astrid got up from her spot, approached Fishlegs to see what he was up to, and glanced over his shoulder. She observed his journal was more organized than Hiccup's had been, though the handwriting was cruder. The drawings especially were vastly inferior to Hiccup's. She also noticed that there was no poetry, or any real personal feelings written down. Perhaps there were not any on just this particular page, but she suspected that Fishlegs only used a journal to write down facts and figures, not as an outlet for his inner turmoil as Hiccup had done.

"Is that the Night Fury?" She asked, pointing to one of the more recent sketches.

"As well as I can remember it," he said, "I didn't exactly have much of a chance to look at it. I was half drowned at the time." He shuddered.

That explained the poor quality of the sketch and the lack of details. And as he had only seen the dragon once it was dead and decaying, he did not know to depict its proud and powerful countenance. It was as if he had sketched the image of a dead Kraken infant, which occasionally washed up on Berk's beaches: the sketch in no way conveyed what the creature must have been like while it lived.

"So they were all black?" Astrid asked. The others came over to have a look as well.

"Yes. It makes perfect sense. After all they're called _Night_ Furies, and they blend in with the night sky so well, I couldn't expect them to be any other color—"

"Then why'd that one have a brown tail?" Ruffnut muttered to herself as he was talking.

"—from what I saw, this was a fairly good sized dragon. He was probably as big as a Nadder, but had four feet, and his wings looked considerably larger. I'd say his speed in life must've been a 10, maybe higher. And his—good heavens, what's that?" he exclaimed. A horrible cry of grief tore through the air. Nobody could say where it had come from, but they could guess who had made it.

"Hiccup must be upset again," Snotlout said nervously.

Ruffnut suddenly staggered where she stood. Hiccup appeared out of thin air, clenching her shoulders fiercely in his hands. His eyes were blazing and his arms were trembling. "You've got that right, Snotlout!" he snapped, "Ruffnut, how did you know Toothless had brown on his tail?"

Ruffnut paled even more than she had already. "I…well I just heard it from someone…can't remember who…you know what people here are like, they'll talk about anything!" she added quickly.

"The only ones on Berk who could possibly know what Toothless's tail looked like are me, the ones out on the boats at this very moment who haven't had a chance to tell anyone on shore what they've seen…and the one who fired the shot that killed us!" His hands went from her shoulders to her throat, "the one who fired the shot that killed us!"

"Sis, what's he talking about?" Tuffnut asked nervously. The others were staring at Ruffnut in shock.

"Oh my Gods," Astrid gasped. Fishlegs dropped his journal. Snotlout looked dazed. But Ruffnut looked ready to faint.

"I know it was you, Ruffnut. You can't hide from me any longer!" Hiccup said ferociously, "You killed Toothless and now you're going to pay for it!"


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

Stoick had no sooner climbed out of the boat, the corpse of his son in tow, when he saw the ghost of his son floating towards him, an enraged expression on his face and a terrified Ruffnut Thorsten in tow. The other teens were right behind them, looking more worried than he had ever seen them.

"What is going on now?" he asked wearily. The Vikings who were disembarking behind him were confused and apprehensive.

The ghost threw Ruffnut onto the sand. "It was her, Stoick! She killed me and Toothless!"

Stoick looked down at the girl, who was trembling horribly. He no longer felt weary, but angry and alert. "Ruffnut is this true?" he asked with icy coolness.

Ruffnut had difficulty speaking. "Chief, I—I swear, I—"

"Go on! Tell him!" Hiccup said roughly. But Ruffnut was too terrified to speak. Hiccup could not entirely blame her. The usual punishment for murderers on Berk was to execute them.

And Tuffnut was not about to let his sister be executed. He stepped before her defensively and said loudly, "Now just a minute! This is completely absurd! We're being asked to believe that Ruffnut managed to kill a Night Fury, the most dangerous and fearsome dragon in existence? No offense," he added to his stricken sister, "Don't you all see this is just another act of revenge from Hiccup! He framed Snotlout and me, didn't he? Now he's trying to frame Ruffnut for his death and make her spend a night or two in that…that horrible prison and subject her to all sorts of…well, I won't allow it!" he turned to face the ghost directly, "We've had enough of your lies, Hiccup, and I'm not going to see you frame my sister for something she didn't do! You all know Ruffnut! Sure, we Thorstens like to pull pranks and we might get a little carried away now and then—and I'm sorry for some of those times—but to actually _kill_ someone? Come on, that's a load of bogus beans, and you've got no way to prove anything because there's nothing to prove!" He folded his arms confidently.

Hiccup raised his eyebrows. "Oh really? Then if I'm telling a lie, how is it Ruffnut knew the color of Toothless's tailfin?"

Tuffnut shrugged jerkily, "Like she said, people talk! It's their favorite pastime! Fishlegs saw the Night Fury the other day; he's seen what it looks like!"

Fishlegs could have contradicted him and told them that he had not noted the color of the Night Fury's tail, nor did he even understand how that was relevant, but he could not bring himself to speak. In fact, he did not want to be a part of this at all, yet his legs seemed to refuse to obey his burning desire to walk away.

Stoick spoke up sharply. "What has the stupid color of a dragon's tail got to do with anything?"

The ghost spoke deliberately. "Does anybody here remember the last dragon raid to happen when I was alive? The one where I insisted I shot down a Night Fury?"

"The one where you nearly destroyed the village again," Stoick frowned.

"I was running away from a Monstrous Nightmare!"

"Which only attacked you because you didn't listen to us when we told you to stay somewhere safe!"

"That's an interesting choice of words. 'Dragons always go for the kill', yet now you say this one only attacked because of my actions. But the point is: I was telling the truth that night! I shot Toothless down and part of his tailfin was torn off in the fall! So after I befriended him, I took it upon myself to give him back the means to fly! His new tailfin was made of brown leather! And she knew the color of his tailfin! How? Because she had seen it before! When could she have seen it if not on the day that we—well, you know what day I'm talking about. And if I am telling a lie, why isn't she denying it?"

"But how could Ruffnut possibly shoot down a Night Fury?" Tuffnut yelled, ignoring the ghost's last question, "They're like the fastest dragon in the world, right Fish?"

"Speed is unknown, but yes, they're very fast," Fishlegs whimpered.

"See?"

Hiccup shook his head. "We were testing out the tailfin at the time. Toothless was only going about a third of the speed he could have gone. And since I was still learning how to direct the fin, he wasn't as maneuverable as he had been before. In broad daylight, it wouldn't have been an impossible shot."

"Well, Ruffnut?" Stoick said roughly, "Either refute the charges or confess to them! Did you or did you not kill my son?"

All eyes were on her. Her eyes were on Hiccup's corpse. It was laying on the ground, devoid of all senses, a frail and helpless creature that had died needlessly.

"I—I just have to say this," she said hoarsely, trying not to break down in tears, "Hiccup, I swear to Odin, I didn't know you were on that dragon until…until it was too late."

Stoick looked furious. Tuffnut shook his vigorously.

She continued sporadically. "I was out in the woods. I was going to…to play around with a catapult, and I…I saw a dragon, flying over the ocean. What…what would anyone do? I loaded the catapult and aimed…and just as I released it, the dragon angled itself towards me and I saw…" she lost her voice.

"You saw me on his back," Hiccup finished for her. He was looking at Ruffnut as if he was seeing her for the very first time.

"I didn't really know it was you!" she cried, "I didn't make the connection until afterwards. And then…and then I…" she buried her face in her hands.

Stoick looked from her to the ghost to the body the ghost had once been, clenching his fists.

Spitelout came forward and anxiously said, "Chief, the law is clear: the punishment for murder is execution!"

Ruffnut looked up at Spitelout, saw he was not joking, and fainted. Tuffnut screamed and would have attacked him if Snotlout had not grabbed him.

"True Vikings obey their laws. And our Chiefs must be true Vikings," Spitelout went on darkly, "We can't afford a crime like this to go unpunished," he added in a low tone.

Stoick nodded.

"That's crazy!" Tuffnut shouted, "She…I…hang the law! Who cares? Hiccup was already breaking the law, remember? He'd befriended a dragon, that's treason, right? He was dead by rights; Ruff just saved us the trouble of an execution! No offense, Hiccup!" he added quickly. But Hiccup had disappeared.

"The law is the law, boy," Mildew said. He had been listening with interest and was eager to add his input now.

"And since when do you care about the law? You're just saying this because you don't like her!"

"Well you two have constantly given me trouble ever since you could walk," Mildew retorted, "I see no reason to be considerate!"

"Chief, are you going to listen to this old geezer? This is Ruffnut's life we're talking about, not some silly little prank!"

Astrid suddenly found she could not stay silent anymore. "It was an accident, Chief! She didn't mean to do it! She deserves to be punished for her actions, yes, but there's no reason to kill her!"

Tuffnut nodded eagerly. "Right! I mean, doesn't Ruffnut deserve a trial and everything? Don't our parents get a say in this?"

Stoick looked at Tuffnut imperiously. "What good would a trial do? We've all heard her confess to it!"

"She was just joking about it!" But he was grasping at straws and he knew it.

Stoick drew himself up. "I've heard her confess to killing my only son. I will not let such a crime go unpunished. And if the Chief ignores the laws of his own tribe, than he has no right to ask others to obey them. Take her to the prison."

When Ruffnut came to, she was in Berk's prison. For a moment she looked around in confusion, and then the horrible truth came flooding back to her memory. "Oh Gods, this is it!" she cried, "They're going to kill me!"

"Shut up, you!" a prison guard yelled. Distressed by this unfamiliarly harsh treatment, she fell silent.

She knew it was justice. She knew she had killed the Chief's son and Heir. She had always known this was going to happen, ever since that horrible moment when she had figured out what had happened.

It had all been so strange, initially. At first she could not believe it had happened. When she had seen the human figure on that dragon's back she had not registered that it was Hiccup, at least not until the boulder hit him and she heard him cry out. The ironic thing was that had the dragon been flying alone the projectile would have largely missed it. Instead it was Hiccup who had been hit and thrown off the dragon's back, and Ruffnut had watched as the two tumbled into the rough sea.

Soon afterwards the search had been organized, and it was then she began to realize what she had done. At first she had been dismissive of it, for it was Hiccup the Useless, and she had been more curious about why he had been on that dragon to begin with. But as time went by the reality sank in more and more, to the point where she had been physically ill with guilt and fear of what would happen if she was discovered. It was hard to say which had affected her more. Either way, there had been moments when she had gazed at herself in a looking glass and wanted to smash it, as if that would somehow erase everything she was and what she had done.

When Tuffnut had told her the suicide theory, she had been the one to spread it around, for she saw it as a way to explain Hiccup's death without anyone appearing guilty. And then Hiccup's ghost had appeared and squashed the rumor. When Hiccup had accused Tuffnut and Snotlout of murder she had almost spoken out, and would have confessed everything had there been a trial for her brother.

And now she was the one in jail instead of Tuff, and there would be no revelations to save her.

Tuffnut and her parents came to see her. Her parents were clearly torn between wanting to help her and feeling disgust over what their daughter had done, but Tuffnut was adamantly on her side and all the more miserable and hopeless for it.

"We've been trying to persuade the Chief," he said, "I've been trying to find all kinds of loopholes, offering alternate theories, why I even offered bribes, but—"

"But you ended up angering him," their mother interrupted, "and made him point out that it was his son who had died."

"Yeah," Tuffnut looked at the floor, "I'm sorry sis. I don't think there's anything we can…"

"It's all right, Tuff," she croaked.

"We could always break you out and run away," he suggested, a bright expression on his face, "yeah, I could do that!"

"Have you seen Hiccup anywhere?" she asked, ignoring his suggestion.

He shook his head. "I don't think anybody's seen him since the beach."

"Ruff," her father said slowly, "Is it true? Did you kill the Chief's son?"

She could only nod. The disappointment in his voice was so distressing she could not answer it.

"She was trying to kill a dragon!" Tuffnut cried, "It wasn't her fault a human happened to be on it!"

"When's the execution?" Ruffnut managed to say.

Her mother had an equally hard time saying, "tomorrow morning,"

Hiccup sat in the woods, deep in thought.

So it was Ruffnut who had done it. He had not really suspected her, but he supposed it made as much sense as anyone else.

And how did he feel now that the mystery was solved and the killer was soon to be punished?

He felt nothing at all.

Snotlout had never felt less hungry. He picked at his food and let it grow cold on his plate. His parents had their appetites but the table was silent beyond the sound of chewing.

At last Snotlout could wait no more, and blurted out, "Dad, why are you so anxious to see Ruffnut executed?"

Spitelout put down his fork. "It's not her. It's what she's done. She killed Stoick's heir."

"Since when have you cared for Hiccup?" Snotlout cried wildly.

Spitelout grabbed his son by the ear. "I never have, but listen! If someone kills the heir and gets away with it, what's to stop someone from killing you?"

"Me?"

"Snotlout, you're the heir now! If Ruffnut goes free for killing the previous heir, what if someone assumes they'll go free after killing you?"

"But we—"

"You let one weed grow in the garden, and more weeds will come in time. So we remove the weed and dispose of it to keep the garden safe. It's harsh, yes, but it's what's best for everyone,"

"Not for Ruffnut," Snotlout mumbled helplessly.

All through the long night Ruffnut kept expecting Hiccup to show up at any moment to gloat and torment her. She had anticipated the same things to happen to her that had happened to Tuffnut, but her anticipations were for nothing. The night was as still and silent as it could possibly be. She neither saw nor heard anything supernatural. She thought the silence was worse than any sounds a phantom could create.

Sleep was almost impossible, yet now and then she started drifting off, only to wake up abruptly and frantically wonder what the time was and how long it was until daybreak.

What hope did she have? She could not believe Stoick would let his son's killer go unpunished, regardless of how poor a relationship the two had had. Who could possibly get him to change his mind? Tuffnut and her parents had tried and failed, and nobody else on Berk besides Gobber, Gothi, and possibly Spitelout had that kind of way with Stoick. And Spitelout had already made it clear what side he was on, Gobber might actually encourage avenging the loss of his apprentice and close friend, and Gothi would probably go along with Stoick unless the Gods commanded otherwise. And none of her friends like Astrid or Fishlegs could possibly get Stoick to change his mind on something like this. No, the only person who could change Stoick's mind was Stoick himself.

And Hiccup?

She doubted Hiccup would help her in any way now. And why should he? She had killed him and his best friend. She had no right or reason to expect any kind of aid from him.

She did not know it, but Tuffnut had reached the same conclusion. He had gone out frantically trying to find Hiccup without fully knowing why he was trying. He was just trying to find someone who could help his sister. But he never found Hiccup.

"How did it come to this?" Fishlegs moaned. He was sitting numbly next to Astrid in Mead Hall. It was early morning, but before the sunrise. Neither of them had been able to sleep. She was staring into the fire, as she had when all this trouble was just starting.

"I don't know," she said heavily. "And to think, just a month ago everything seemed as good as it could ever be. We were fending off raids, another expedition was going out and seemed set to succeed, we were finally learning to kill dragons—"

"Yeah, we were all learning to kill dragons, you made it clear you would outshine everybody, the Twins were their bickering selves, Snotlout was obsessed with you and attention, Hiccup was failing at everything he did, and I was a pathetic boy looking after nobody but himself. Things were just the way they were meant to be, weren't they?"

Astrid held her tongue and looked away evasively. Through a window she could see the clouds were turning a hazy orange. At last the dawn was breaking.

Slowly the Vikings filed into the arena, a few families at a time. The mood was silent and somber. Few people ever enjoyed watching executions, especially when the condemned was one of their own. The fact that it was Ruffnut Thorsten and her crime was killing Hiccup the Useless hardly excited them to see justice done. Mildew could probably have gotten them to revolt and force Stoick to spare Ruffnut, if he had had the inclination to do so. But Mildew was one of the few who liked executions and he had a personal dislike for the Thorsten Twins. When they had not been tormenting Hiccup or each other, he had been preferred target.

One of the gates was raised and Ruffnut was led out by a man wearing a mask. She was pale and trembling. Every step she made took great effort.

She was led to the center of the arena, where a block was waiting. The only real mercy about this was it would be simply a decapitation. Nothing elaborate; it would be quick and relatively painless, or at least as painless as unnatural death ever can be. The executioner had had a lot of practice on dragons, so he knew what he was doing. Still, she could not help but think of times where beheadings had not gone smoothly, where the stroke had been done wrong and the executioner had taken several tries to successfully cut a person's head off. When hearing those stories she had never dreamed the same fate might be hers one day.

She stood before the block and knelt down. It was easy to do so, for she was shaking so badly now her legs could hardly hold her up any longer.

She was not conscious of the groaning that was coming from the spectators, but Chief Stoick was. Ever since he had given his decision, he had battled with himself over whether or not this was the right thing to do. When he had imprisoned her he had held no second thoughts, for he had been furious. Now, that he had calmed down a little he thought over his reasons once again, reminding himself that very soon he could never undo the decision.

No, he decided. She had killed his son and heir. It was either this or banishment, and banishment would in some ways be an even worse punishment.

"Sometimes I hate being Chief," he said to himself.

He watched the executioner, none to gently, direct Ruffnut's head so it fit on the block correctly. He clenched his fists. If he was going to suspend the execution this was the last opportunity. And yet, this was the girl who had killed his only child.

He said nothing. He only watched as the man positioned himself and raised his axe into the air. Everyone present held their breath.

Suddenly the axe floated out of the executioner's hands and was thrown to the ground, where it shattered into a million shards of iron.

The ghost of Hiccup appeared in front of Ruffnut, to the accompaniment of gasps and shrieks from the crowd. "That axe must've been imported from somewhere. No blade made by me or Gobber would have been that weak."

The executioner, rather sheepishly, looked down and muttered something about it being borrowed.

Stoick leapt to his feet and yelled, "What is this?"

"I'll tell you what 'this' is," Hiccup retorted, pointing to the shaky Ruffnut, who was hardly daring to believe what had just happened. "It's a halt in the proceedings. Jokes aside, I know what the law says, but doesn't the victim get a say in this?"

"Why didn't you say anything before then?" someone yelled, "You disappeared!"

"And I've had time to think. I ask again: doesn't the victim get a say?"

All eyes turned to Stoick, who had to think for a moment. "I…I don't really know, actually. Murder victims usually can't say anything…"

"So I'll set a new example. The fact is I'm a victim who's tired of seeing death everywhere. I'm not exactly _happy_ about what she did," he shot Ruffnut a dark look, "But killing her too won't do me or Toothless any good now. I don't want her dead. And I think she's already suffered enough."

Mildew stood up. "The law says—"

"Since when have you cared about what the law says, unless it's to satisfy your own sense of self-importance?" Hiccup asked wearily, "I wager many of you privately believe she did Berk a favor. And maybe she did. She did kill Toothless…" He glared at her again. Then he looked around at the crowd and raised his voice. "But there's a way to ensure neither of us died for nothing. It's said Vikings love ensuring that kind of thing, right? That's one reason why we're still living here, isn't it? Or _you_ are, at any rate," he added with a bitter laugh, "but it's also said Vikings are never ones to turn away from a challenge, right? So in exchange for this mercy, I'm giving Berk a new challenge: _try_ and make friends with Dragons. You might find it's not as hard as you think. And remember, Hiccup the _Useless_ was able to make friends with a Night Fury. If he can do it, surely all you _true_ Vikings can do it, if you just have the willingness to try! Or are you all too scared to?"

Stoick spoke up after a long silence. "And what about the raids?"

"If you're asking me why they raid Berk, I don't know. I might've found out if Toothless had lived. But I think this is something you'll only learn by observing them. Isn't this idea worth an attempt? Don't we owe it to the past and future to at least give this a shot?"

His words had a slight impact, he could see. Perhaps there was some hope. Or perhaps they would forget all their resolutions within a few days. He saw them turning to their neighbors and muttering their opinions while keeping an eye on Stoick to see what he was thinking.

Spitelout turned to Stoick and said firmly, "We can't risk setting a precedent! And letting dragons live on Berk would only triple the hazards!"

"What will you think of yourself tomorrow, Chief?" Gobber interrupted.

Stoick looked at the ground thoughtfully, as if he did not hear either of them.

While they talked, Hiccup began undoing Ruffnut's bonds, even though Stoick had not actually ordered her release. She was almost too ashamed to look him in the eye and was so unsteady that she could hardly stand.

"Why?" she asked weakly.

"You probably wouldn't understand, but it was for a similar reason that I once spared a dragon I had at my mercy." He drifted away before she could say any more and floated up to where his father was sitting.

"Well?"

Stoick shook his head. "I don't like it. Being merciful to Ruffnut Thorsten is one thing, but your 'challenge'…where are we even supposed to start?"

"First you'll need some dragons. Relax, Dad, I'll be around to help—so long as you don't burn my body."

Stoick nodded slightly. "We'll find a place for it."

Spitelout stood up. "Perhaps your heir should be taking part in this discussion. I'll go fetch Snotlout, if that's alright."

While thinking over the risks to his son's ascension, Spitelout had realized that if Hiccup existed as a ghost he could still be Stoick's heir. In fact, he could rule Berk forever if he desired to. This was far more dangerous than the precedent he had feared sparing Ruffnut would set. So before he found his son, he went to find Mildew.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

Mildew and a handful of others, villagers whose support he could count on, hustled through the woods, carrying a shrouded body over their shoulders.

"Are you sure about this?" one asked nervously, "what if the Chief finds out?"

"He won't," Mildew retorted, "if questioned we all swear we never left the arena, and we vouch for each other. And even if he does find out, it'll be too late."

"And you're sure this will stop dragons from living on Berk?"

"Of course! You've all heard Useless complain that without a proper burial he's stuck here. If we give him a proper burial he goes, and his ideas go with him! Now, get some branches and make an altar, quick!"

They swiftly turned a pile of wood into a crude altar, upon which they sloppily and unceremoniously placed Hiccup's body. Mildew then struck a flint to make sparks and lit a stick. Although a light coating of snow had fallen the night before and the ground was damp, the wood was soon burning. Black smoke rose into the cool air as the body began to slowly turn into ashes.

Mildew suddenly cackled. "Well, goodbye Hiccup! Hope you'll be gone for good this time!"

In the arena people were still debating what Hiccup had suggested. Making friends with dragons seemed crazy, traitorous, and downright dangerous, but on the other hand nothing else had worked for three hundred years. Most of all, they were curious to see what the Chief actually thought about this.

For the first time in years Stoick was listening to Hiccup. The ghost was explaining all the advantages living with dragons could bring them. And while Stoick was still hesitant, for he held personal reasons for hating dragons which could not be simply dismissed with a wave of his hand, he had to admit some of Hiccup's points had potential to help Berk.

"—think about it, dad: how many people suffer from the cold here every winter? If it doesn't make them sick or causes them to freeze to death, they're miserable night and day. With dragons, we'd never have to worry about the cold again!" Hiccup was eagerly saying.

Had this concerned any other species, Stoick might have agreed at once to bring them to Berk. But, because this was dragons they were talking about, he still felt unsure of it.

"And what if they set our homes on fire?"

"We can train them not to do that, and we can train them to put fires out. We'll have the best fire prevention method this side of the Atlantic!"

"I say we do it." Gobber urged.

Spitelout had returned and now shook his head. "I say this is a bunch of dreams,"

As Stoick sat deep in thought, he saw the other teens timidly them. Ruffnut was clinging to her brother, who was looking at the ghost with more appreciation than he had ever shown before. Then he looked concerned. "You don't look so good, Hic."

Indeed, on second glance, the ghost looked more ashen than before and he was bending forward a little ways, as if his stomach was upsetting him.

"Hiccup, what is it?"

"I don't know," he said, looking at his hands, "I've haven't felt like this before…"

"Oh. Well, we all talked it over and we just came to say—"

Ruffnut abruptly threw herself at Hiccup's feet and wept. "Hiccup, please, forgive me! Forgive all of us! I'm so sorry for what I did to you…and to Toothless,"

"Whatever we did to you, we promise we'll never do it again," Tuffnut added quickly, "And…thanks for my sister,"

Hiccup shrugged and put a hand to his forehead. "I feel warm…"

"We're sorry," Snotlout said numbly. " _I'm_ sorry, coz,"

Fishlegs was crying so much he could not speak coherently. He tried to say his apologies but could only say "I'm," over and over.

Astrid felt the ghost's gaze on her. She took a deep breath. "I never loved you, Hiccup. You probably know that now. But I never hated you, and I never wanted any of this for you either."

His smile was faint and fleeting. "That's the Hofferson way of offering an apology I suppose. All right, I'll—" He suddenly doubled up and clenched his chest.

"Hiccup, what's wrong?" Astrid asked anxiously. The others said asked similar questions, for they now saw his spectral form was changing from gray to coal black.

"Son? What's happening to you?"

"I don't know…" his gaze fell upon Spitelout and his eyes suddenly lit up with understanding. "Yes I do! I don't know how, but I'm—whatever you have to say, you'd better say it fast. And remember what I've told you about dragons! It is possible to befriend them! Remember that when people Spitelout and Mildew try to force you to believe otherwise!"

Gobber rushed over. He understood what was happening. "Hiccup, you were the best smith I have ever known. You were like a son to me…never let anyone tell you differently!"

"I won't, Gobber," he said weakly. He glanced at his father, but Stoick looked unsure of what to say to him and hesitated to draw near. Perhaps it was the display of emotion in public that made him hesitant, perhaps it was because, unlike Gobber he did not understand, or perhaps it was because he had never truly known how to behave around his unusual son.

"Nothing Dad? Not even now?"

Stoick looked confused. "What do you mean? What's going on?"

Ruffnut cried out again, "Forgive me, Hiccup! I'm so sorry!"

"I don't—" And then Hiccup gagged loudly. The blackened ghost clenched his chest as if he was having a heart attack, and with a final groan of agony he vanished into the winter air.

Everyone looked around, half expecting him to reappear somewhere else. After all, he had done this kind of trick several times before.

Nothing happened. No one ever saw or heard Hiccup again.

 **The End**


End file.
